U.S. President Barack Obama tours the Great Wall of China on November 18, 2009, in Beijing.
Perusing the Comment page of my morning read, I see that George Monbiot - who'll be participating in tomorrow's Munk debate - is accusing Canada of " sabotaging the climate talks that will culminate in Copenhagen next month." How strange. Perusing today's Guardian, I read in a column in which the very same George Monbiot argues that the United States is the principal obstacle to an agreement:
"I concentrate on the role of the U.S. not because it is the only obstacle to a strong climate agreement (you should see what Canada has been up to) but because it has so far done more than any other nation to prevent global action from taking place.
The Kyoto negotiations in 1997 were comprehensively trashed by a U.S. delegation led by Al Gore. … After wrecking the treaty for everyone else, the Clinton government failed to ratify it, and George Bush later pulled out altogether.
It wasn't Gore's fault: the Senate had already voted 95-0 to torpedo any treaty that failed to impose the same conditions on developing countries as it imposed on rich ones. The senators knew this was impossible for poorer countries to accept - in fact that was the point. The political impediments that made a deal with the US impossible in 1997 have scarcely changed."
I'lI agree with Mr. Monbiot that the prospects of the U.S. Senate ratifying an agreement in time to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012, are next to nil; in other words, the climate talks will not "culminate in Copenhagen next month."
I also agree with Mr. Monbiot that there is nothing much for Canada to "sabotage":
"If world leaders can't strike a deal this year, despite a massive build-up and intensive diplomatic activity, why should we expect them to be able to do so next year?"
Mr. Monbiot attributes this state affairs to "The U.S. Senate [being]one of the most corrupt institutions of any democratic nation: most of the incumbents owe their seats to massive corporate funding; in return they must deliver the political goods to their sponsors. These are hopeless conditions in which to broker an agreement which has to defeat vested interests."
Perhaps he's right; as a practical matter, it doesn't really matter. Though France's Nicholas Sarkozy is pushing Barack Obama to return to Copenhagen for the final two days of the conference, the reality is that the President does not have the political capital to persuade the Senate to ratify anything close to what would satisfy the international community.
Mr. Obama has his hands full with health care, still to be passed by the Senate, not to speak of the Afghanistan war. His approval rating has dropped below 50 per cent. Unemployment is in double digits, the highest level in 26 years. The pre-occupation of his Administration in the coming year will be to reduce it in order to contain the large losses the Democrats are expected to suffer in the 2010 mid-term elections. And once those elections are out of the way, the entire focus of the Obama Administration will be on the President's re-election in 2012, not a propitious time to take on a huge issue such as climate change, on which his own party is divided.
As to the Republicans and their friends at Fox News, they've just begun to milk a matter that he does not raise in his open letter to Canadians in today's Globe - "Climategate" - of which Mr. Monbiot wrote in last week's Guardian column: "It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow."