Climate Protection in America is a Question of Faith for Many

When Americans consider the question of climate protection, they see their national security and their global leadership role threatened.

Two days after Barack Obama’s inauguration, opinion pollsters released their list of things Americans worried about most; job security and a two-front war were at the top, with environmental protection coming in dead last at number 20. If the same poll were to be taken today, climate protection would be in free fall, as far as Americans are concerned. In just under a year, the number of Americans who think global warming is real fell from 80 to 72 percent. Republicans have jumped ship en masse. Even Democrats from states with high unemployment rates say that climate protection is an unaffordable luxury. Barack Obama may embrace the world at Copenhagen and whisper sweet nothings in its ear about American leadership on this issue, but in his own country and in his own Congress, too few people will follow his lead for any of his promises to endure.

Global warming and environmental protection have become matters of faith in the United States, permanent skirmishes in the cultural war that also includes abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration. When Obama speaks of “violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe,” his opponents cross themselves as though Satan, himself, were speaking to them. There’s enough oil for generations, just off America’s shores, they say. They see themselves as holy warriors who fervently believe in God’s power and the powers of the markets; they despise government, regardless of who’s in power. They believe that Copenhagen and its backers in the United Nations want nothing less than to weaken America and to usher in socialist world government. For these Americans, Obama’s post-imperial appearance is more than just the selling out of America’s interests – it’s actually high treason, and his 30 pieces of silver came in the form of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Frozen in an ideological culture war

Of course, there are other voices in this debate: those who complain that America is frozen in an ideological culture war that puts it increasingly behind the environmental technology being developed in countries like Germany, Japan and even China. These warnings come from those who remember that America was once at the forefront of environmental innovation, just as it was on November 13, 1992, when the U.S. Congress ratified the U.N. convention on climate change, the first industrialized nation to do so. President George H.W. Bush promoted the pact that “questioned man’s dangerous interference in the climate system” and demanded wealthy nations do more than poor ones in “taking the lead.” The convention is still in force and, at the same time, has lapsed.

Many still dream about how green America would now be if only Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000. They curse George W. Bush’s mocking hostility toward science; a president who knew little but believed fervently and was succeeded by a constitutional law professor with Martin Luther King’s rhetoric talents, who often knew a lot, but lost credibility because he hesitated to act. In addition, Obama is handcuffed by a Congress scarcely able to act decisively. Senate rules and open hostility between factions have resulted in the need for a 60-vote majority to pass key legislation. The Senate chamber is destructive and anachronistic, and it seems everyone realizes that, except for the 100 Senate members, themselves. An environmental protection agreement that includes emission controls is, of course, dependent on Senate approval. The Republicans are almost unanimously against such an agreement, so progress is expected neither before nor after Copenhagen.

Not a leader, only a player

The White House complains that America may still be a player in the climate issue, but it is no longer a leader. It discretely curses the shortsighted idiocy of climate change deniers who fail to understand how strongly the issue impacts America’s national security and its global leadership role. As the country continues to trail China, India, and even Brazil, they say it needs another “Sputnik shock.” Obama’s supporters ask if California, the state that has always served as an environmental model for the rest of the country, gives them any hope. And when they do, Obama’s opponents smile back at them and say that’s why California is now bankrupt.