Obama and the “Divine Surprise” of Copenhagen

The day the rest of the world stops thinking he is the only one to save the planet, Barack Obama can finally breathe — deeply. In separating his trip to Oslo — where he will officially be awarded his Nobel Peace Prize today — from his participation in the climate conference in Copenhagen, the American president has taken a political risk — albeit a voluntarily limited risk. Already confronted with a recession, unprecedented since the Great Depression, and a record unemployment rate, the “Nobel Laureate” Obama has much to do on his own terrain. Despite the elation about, or even “saintly” view of, Obama as a crusader in the battle against global warming, his priority in Copenhagen will be first, and especially, to preserve his political capital by not exposing himself to the failure of an unrealistic objective.

“Paris is delighted, as this decision shows the importance attached by the United States to the success of this climate summit,” the Elysée overtly rejoiced at notice of Barack Obama’s visit to Copenhagen, initially planned for December 9th, but later postponed for the wrap up work on December 17th and 18th. That’s hardly reassuring to Europeans who do not assume that this indirect gesture of goodwill reinforces the likelihood of an eventual political agreement. In reality, the decisions of China and India to announce quantified targets for reducing CO2 emissions hang in the balance. The American president’s decision to go to Copenhagen at the end of the party leads one to believe that the broad outlines of a compromise are essentially completed, as suggested in the leaked text of the “Danish proposal.” In every case, a solo visit by Barack Obama would have given the worrisome signal that true negotiations have been discarded. This would be all the more disconcerting because the Democratic president, an ardent defender of renewable energy, has done everything he can to show up at the conference and demonstrate his desire to break with eight years of the notorious indifference of the Bush era in regard to the climate issue.

From there to claiming victory, is a difficult step yet to be taken. First, because the disproportionate media coverage of the so-called “Climategate” — the case of pirated e-mails from the University of East Anglia — brandished as the smoking gun of a scientific conspiracy by global warming skeptics and Saudi Arabia, illustrates the extent of the psychological resistance to the battle against climate change across the Atlantic — especially when Fox News and the libertarian think tank Cato Institute take care of fueling the chatter on conspiracy blogs. But also (and especially because) the “divine surprise” of the U.S.’s targeted goal of a 17 percent reduction of CO2 emissions (from 2005 levels, by the year 2020), formalized by Barack Obama on November 26th, isn’t the only surprise.

Presented by the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, as an “ambitious” target, the objective of 17 percent corresponds to the low end of a compromise in negotiations in Congress. In addition, the 1990 levels, serving as a reference point for Europeans, represent a reduction of barely 3 to 4 percent, against a target of 20 percent over the same period for the European Union. For Adele Morris, American expert at the Brookings Institution, who participated in negotiations that resulted in a “non-agreement” at The Hague in November 2000, the absolute priority of Barack Obama is to specifically avoid a bitter repeat of the precedent set with the Kyoto protocol, signed in November 1998 by Al Gore but never ratified by Congress. Even Sen. John Kerry admits that it isn’t certain the American Senate will endorse the 17 percent objective in the spring.

By wanting to give lessons in morality, without understanding the political constraints that weigh on the American president, Europeans might once again find themselves with their backs against a wall, like at The Hague in 2000, Adele Morris predicts. Despite the media chatter it has received, the definitive, “historic” opinion of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the dangers of CO2 emissions, made December 7th, is simply an expected symbolic formality that will serve only as a tactical tool inside the Senate.

Not to overestimate Barack Obama’s power of persuasion, without underestimating the internal political pressure he faces, would, paradoxically, be the best assurance of a “divine surprise” in Copenhagen.