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TechnoratiObama on Climate: Is He Even Trying?
Judging from the UN speech, I am starting to doubt it.
For those of us who care desperately about the climate, President Obama's speech on Tuesday-the first to the world body by this most admired of world leaders-was a dud, a towering disappointment. Coming at the beginning of what the UN has dubbed "climate week," the speech marked the beginning of a three-month push towards the global climate conference at Copenhagen. Obama used it mostly to downplay expectations. And it's those downplayed expectations that may prove to be tragically self-fulfilling.
Oh sure, there were a few flights of soaring rhetoric: "Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history," blah blah blah. But of all issues, this is the one where rhetoric does the least good. The enemy here is chemistry and physics, and they are heartily unimpressed by anything except specific targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide. And on this front Obama was completely unforthcoming, promising only that "we will continue to do so by investing in renewable energy, promoting greater efficiency, and slashing our emissions to reach the targets we set for 2020 and our long-term goal for 2050."
The reason he didn't speak those targets out loud is because anyone who knows anything about climate-and that now includes, on at least a rudimentary level, most of the heads of the state who assembled to hear his speech-knows that those targets are unbearably weak. By 2050 he's talking about 80 percent reductions-but 2050 is so far away as to be almost meaningless without strong interim targets. By 2020 the bill he's backing aims for something on the order of 17 percent reductions, though the legislation is so shot through with weird weird loopholes that that's probably a meaningless number too. In any event, it's well below what actual scientists are calling for: reductions in carbon emissions from the developed countries of something like 40 percent by 2020. In other words, an all-out, crash effort to change course and avert disaster.
And that's not at all what Obama seems to be planning for. His most immediate priority-"every nation's most immediate priority"-is producing more economic growth. Copenhagen can be a "significant step." We must not let "the perfect be the enemy of progress."
Never mind that no one is talking about perfect-we're well past that. I mean, the Arctic is already falling into the sea. But the idea that we should settle for making some "progress" is either a declaration of defeat or a profound misreading of the latest science. Obama gave a speech that would have been great had it come two years ago-but now, with scientists ever more frightened, it left the thousands gathered here for the climate conference feeling deflated.
And most weren't buying his implicit excuse-that Congress couldn't deliver more. Here's how he delicately put it: "all of us will face doubts and difficulties in our own capitals as we try to reach a lasting solution." It's true that the Congress is an obstacle-they're the real villains here, not the president. But Obama doesn't get a pass because he hasn't even tried to do what leaders in democracies must: rally support.
A speech at the UN doesn't cut it, especially one this limp. Even calling in the TV anchors for an Oval Office meeting, like he did on health care over the weekend, doesn't cut it. This man knows how to campaign-we saw that last year. When he was running for president, he left no stone unturned-hundreds of thousands of us, me included, gave up our free time to knock on doors, make phone calls, do the work of making change. What a triumph when he won! Obama even knows how to campaign about issues-he was, after all, a community organizer.
It will, then, fall to other community organizers to pick up the ball for him now. Tens of thousands of them have already registered their actions at our 350.org website for Oct. 24, in 120 nations (and rising daily). It's going to be the most widespread day of environmental activism ever, designed to take the most important number on earth and drive it into the debate. Obama may be shy about talking targets, but we're not: science has made clear, right up through this week's edition of Nature, that 350 parts per million carbon dioxide is the most the planet can safely deal with.
And that number got an airing at the UN yesterday too, from a man willing to speak more straightforwardly than our president. Obama was followed to the podium by Mohammed Nasheed, who also won an election last year, in his case to head the Maldives. (And in his case over an autocrat who had ruled for three decades, and kept Nasheed a political prisoner for five years). If we didn't take tough action to get back to 350 ppm soon, he pointed out, "We will not live. We will die. Our country will not exist."
Other countries will still exist, though not easily-Sydney, for instance, is today in the grips of a dust storm so severe planes are being diverted. But everyone should feel Nasheed's fire. Let's hope Obama stuck around long enough to listen.
22 Comments so far
Show AllObama's climate speech continues the string of superb successes he has achieved this summer. Though critics castigate such speeches as "duds", they are only such if one assumes that his purpose is to prevent climate catastrophe. Yes, Bill, he is "trying", he is trying and succeeding in forwarding the interests of his sponsors. Their investment in him is paying off unbelievably.
Writers who are given a national stage usually reinforce the notion that presidents are primary actors within the drama of national politics, that their decisions and tactics are decisive factors guiding the development of the historical moment. This meta-message is far more important that the well-wrought details of their critiques. As long as we focus on personality and style, the real forces behind the climate debacle can be safely ignored.
Once we step away from personalities, it quickly becomes obvious that Obama is carrying out the interests of his class, conveniently masked by his progressive image. He is serving the interests of the energy industry because they are representative of those who have advanced his career and who will support his continued advancement as long as he is useful to them. Public opinion counts for nothing in this realm.
"Obama is a master when it comes to embodying what the formerly left Christopher Hitchens once (in a book about the Clintons) called 'the essence of American politics' - 'the manipulation of populism by elitism.' The president is a maestro at executing what former Clinton administration official David Rothokopf calls 'the violin model,' under which 'you hold power with the left hand and you play the music with the right.' In other words, 'you' gain and keep office with populace-pleasing progressive-sounding rhetoric but govern in standard service to existing dominant corporate and military institutions." - Paul Street, "They Employ a Lot of Our Friends: Left Reflections on Obama's Corporatist Health Care Speech", Sept. 12, 2009.
This may give you a new perspective:
http://www.markfiore.com/
Fiore usually hits the nail on the head.
Walk in peace.
Well. I think we are all so used to resorting to colorful putdowns and creative name calling during the Bush years, its sort of hard to stop isnt' it? Obama WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ELECTED if he had been any more to the left, and he never pretended to be. I didn't work for the Obama campaign because I thought he was perfect- he was and has shown himself to be better than the alternative, and that's why I knocked on doors.
Can you imagine what it would be like otherwise...can you just hear McCain trying to give a speech to the UN about climate change? Or maybe he would send Ms.Palin- that would be even more entertaining! Please! And if you think the loonie-right is all worked up, violent and loud now- can you imagine the situation if Nader were Pres? My god, Obama is walking a tight wire, so stop complaining and get to work yourselves. McKibben is doing plenty, and keeping on Obama is his work, and all of ours. But I have had 8 years already of sarcasm and petty name calling- can we move on?
We actually have a adult in the office now, and I suggest we again act like adults as well.
Lesser Evilist crap.
The loonie right's tactics have worked? WHY? When they say that government is the ultimate evil the Democrats and Republcians go along and prove them right, all they know is theft. People are angry at many of the right things, for obviously the wrong reasons. If you look at the economy, what logic can you give for having an economic system almost entirely based on finance, which is not the REAL economy? Obama had progressive, leftist if he REALLY wanted new ideas, economists he could have chosen from to be part of his economic brain trust. Who did he pick? He picked men who CAUSED this horrible economic mess, who to this day justify the policies and whose only ideas to fix the economic situation is to re-inflate the financial bubbles and to socialize the costs of their crook buddies on Wall Street while allowing them to entirely privatize the benefits. We wouldn't want a Wall Street CEO to have to get a smaller Olympic sized pool. What should an "adult" who is knowledgeable about the economy do when Obama fills his economic team with lying crooks who are pushing for the same exact policies that have caused this mess (which means the next collapse will be even bigger and worse as a result). How about a health care system that relies on private actors and profits and is the most ineffecient in the world as a result? Should "adults" say nothing as that horrible system is proped up as well?
The problem with any "centrist" is that by being a centrist they think the institutions and dominant ideas don't need fundamental change, that tinkering around the edges is all that is needed. I'm sorry, but that is ubsurd if you look at the condition that the "centrists" and right wing have left this country thanks to their polices. A "centist" also denies that the left or right can be entirely right about something, which is just as irrational as assuming it is ALWAYS right. Maybe the center, the right or left is right. We don't know, and have to find out based on what they say, the facts and logic they present. Just saying, well the left is there, the right is there, I'm in the middle and as a result am more logical, is nonsense. Most of the time centrists are logically inconsistant and are almost always nothing more than half right, since many times one of the polls has far better ideas.
Obama is a "centrist" all right. He's in the center of elite opinion the bubble of DC, which is well to the right of the general public. He's in the center of an insanely nuts and self serving right wing and group of people who want the current institutions and ideas to stay in place, with some improvements. Anyone who doesn't fit into either group is shut out and ignored, including the general public.
I didn't think Obama was perfect, either, but I gave him money, campaigned for him, and voted for him because I couldn't imagine the liar and sell-out that he has turned out to be. I thought his background--suffering the indignities of racism, being exposed to his mother's death from cancer while she lay in her hospital bed fighting with insurance companies for coverage of her treatment, teaching constitutional law--would mean that he really intended to help the bottom 95% of the U.S. population by adopting a single payer healthcare system. I thought he would restore habeas corpus, and stop torture and rendition. I thought he would release all the people we have imprisoned unjustly for so many years, I thought he would investigate and prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration, and I thought he would stop creating enemies for the U.S. by occupying and destroying other countries. Silly me, I even thought, since he has young children, that he would be serious about climate change. (I expected more than a promise to get U.S. cars in 2020 or whenever up to the emissions standards that cars around the world already met a few years ago.) I even thought he'd end mountaintop removal!
But when he kept quiet during Israel's week-long massacre of civilians in Gaza, and filled his cabinet and advisor posts with neocons and crooks, I realized that "the change we can believe in" is just the same old crap. Sure, Obama is more eloquent than McCain and Palin. So what? It's empty rhetoric, and I'm tired of it already. At least Palin was funny. Since Obama and McCain and Palin are essentially on the same page, anyway, when push comes to shove, I'd rather be entertained than bitterly disappointed.
What tight wire? I see no balance here whatsoever. McCain probably would have needed a Republican legislature to have done as much damage.
What? Like preventing the complete collapse of life as we know on earth is a left-wing issue? Like civility is more important than our atmosphere? Like a protest against stupid and willfull inaction in the face of planetary environmental disaster is "sarcasm and petty name-calling". And BTW, we need to "grow up" and thank our stars we didn't get McMad Dog and Miss Perky?
Generally, Americans dwell under the illusion that their elected representatives will actually DO SOMETHING to solve their problems. That's why they voted for Obama. To DO SOMETHING!!.
So, what has he done? I'm waiting...still waiting...ahem...(looks at watch impatiently)...still waiting...(stares out window at sky full of smog)...still waiting...(notices new grey hair in beard...)...still waiting.
Some of us still like using our critical thinking brain cells, much to your chagrin. We can't all be Obamabots, ignoring all his obvious similarities to Bush, Clinton and the usual suspects. So you're a committed centrist--so what? Just steer a path down the center of the road, with those yellow stripes and dead armadillos and raccoons, and you can sleep soundly. The long dismal list of things Obama has done to extend and expand the Bush-Cheney criminal legacy, exhaustively documented in numerous CD postings for months, is like water off a duck's back for you. At least McKibben is wising up to Obama's transparent fakery. You, on the other hand, are doubling down on how much better of we are than if Nader were president and the rightwingers were scarier than ever. And your notion of what being an adult means will keep us in a feedback loop of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama crypto-fascist imperialism leadership for eons. Not that that would bother you at all.
I hate to tell you this but the voters were actually crying for liberalism but most held their breath and voted Obama simply out of desperation. After 8 months of continuing Dubya and even moving to the right of him, there is no excuse. Obama is not breaking any sweat much as you have been seduced into believing. Leaders don't get elected to tell people to "make me do it" and then play kissyface with the monied elites. If Nader were president, Congress would be forced to comply with the public. Of course, we would have a much better Congress too instead of puppets. We're doing all our hard work but what's Obama and the Democrats rewarding us with? More selling out and wars to put this nation into more tears ! I'm glad I voted for Nader thrice this decade.
Even leaving aside the condescending exasperation, your perspective on Obama is a wishful rationalization to distract you from the awful truth that this shiny silk purse is actually the sow's other ear. How did THAT happen?
Obama had no problem accomplishing his first priority after he took office, which was to outsource the US Treasury to Goldman Sachs to further the transformation of our shattered constitutional democracy into government of the banksters, by the banksters, and for the banksters.
Then he rolled over to make sure that the military juggernaut was cozily tucked under the covers, too.
This is not a man who desperately wants to rescue We the People from generations of parasitic capitalism and the resulting mutated corporate state, and is silently resisting a sinister plurality of high finance plutocrats and state security cabals.
The only thing Obama desperately wants is a second term.
Also, I question your peculiar notion that it's OK for Trained Professionals to criticize Obama, but intolerable that a minority of citizens blessed with the capacity for critical thinking do the same. There's so much wrong with that position that I'll just back off slowly from it.
By all means "move forward"-- that's the solution for EVERYTHING now, isn't it?
· Yr Obd't Servant
You have very low standards. That's a big problem for the entire planet. I agree, we need to act like adults. Obama is turning his back on the majority of Americans!
According to poll after poll, the great majority of Americans want:
Out of the Middle East -
Over half say get out, only 25% favor staying, others undecided. Obama wants to escalate.
Single Payer health care -
60% prefer it and 87% of Democrats prefer it. Dems have a triple majority. They could pass what We the People prefer - but they won't. They have been paid off. This is serious and adults know it. People are dying unnecessarily.
Limits on greenhouse gases, even if their bills go up as a result - 75% prefer limits now.
legislation to protect our water systems - over 60%
9-11 - the great majority is not satisfied with the official report. Obama "resigns" Van Jones for having the majority opinion. Can we now act like adults?
You can read the polls yourself. Here are a few I looked at:
1) http://www.healthcare-now.org/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/
2) http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm
3) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html
4) http://noliesradio.org/archives/5498
Obama's no more serious about climate change than he is about health care. Addressing either of these monumental issues with any degree of effectiveness would mean threatening the only thing he shows any actual and abiding concern for: the inalienable rights of corporations to reap obscene profits at everyone else's and the world's expense. Getting to 350 ppm simply isn't going to happen or even be considered under this flim-flam man's watch. McKibben should have known this at least a year ago, instead of knocking on doors to elect this fraud. Why didn't he? Several million of us nobodies out here knew it with startling clarity, so why don't these celebrity activist types ever seem to catch on, until it's a decade too late? Precisely what is served by their persistent denial regarding the Democratic Party's inherent venality? They never reach their purported goals (350), so what's the point of believing in obvious charlatans to lead a movement that never forms, much less moves?
Let's hope Obama stuck around long enough to listen.
He had a golf date with Lloyd Blankfein.
During the entire Bush administration my family received death threats and gunfire due to our effective carbon mitigation program. It was horrible, like the Shock Doctrine.
Obama's election stopped the PSP and White House attacks. Now we just get official letters of "discouragement", not nearly so threatening.
Going from government resistance to nothing helpful is an improvement.
Nicely stated.
I think it is painfully clear to any authentic progressive that Obama is a grand fraud of stellar proportions. I have been convinced for a long time that authentic transformation can only happen at the grass roots level by educating people the importance of down-sizing their lives and follow the praxis of "Voluntary Simplicity" advocated by Duane Elgin (see his book of the same title). We need to keep pushing at the governmental level firstly by working to build third parties and stop rewarding the corporate sponsored pond scum like Obama and the duopoly.
He isn't "trying" on anything except lying.
The rest of the world is passing us by and have already declared that they can't wait for the US to end the foot-dragging, yet Obama is up there on the podium again lecturing the rest of the worl, that they have to get with the program and are waiting for the US to "lead the way".
Obama humiliates us posturing to the world that he is any kind of "change" after Bush--as if all too stupid to see through his BS.
"America is addicted to oil." -- George W. Bush
"America is addicted to fast food." -- Ronald McDonald
We can get all sorts of characters to admit, well, not that flooding from climate change is eventually going to wipe out NYC, Boston, the Lincoln Memorial, Silicon Valley and Florida up to the panhandle, but at least the creeps will admit on certain Tuesdays that the U.S. is addicted to oil and the U.S. economy is going to collapse.
The first problem is, the real product research and product development is still not getting done. The DOE needs to be called out. A rotten egg for their staid do-nothing choices.
Second, new coal plants are being built left and right in America and in China. Doh!
Song and dance.
"every nation's most immediate priority"-is producing more economic growth.
Another nasty case of GDP-fetishism. This guy is turning into the biggest debacle in US history. Unbelievable.
If you put a wind turbine in front of Obama's face he would generate enough power to watch himself on a big screen plasma TV.
The various government mouthpeices have been blathering on about how 'important' climate change is for at least ten years.
The Rio Climate Summit, The Kyoto Accords, etc. etc.
Lots of talk, little or no action.
And all the while the evidence, fact, is piling up that we are committed to a minimum four degrees Celsius global increase in temperature, with the attendant massive loss of human life due to starvation, disease, and war over dwindling resources.
An 80% drop in emissions by 2050 is so laughable to be beyond ludicrous.
Ask any reasonably informed climatologist what should be done and they would tell you we need a 95% drop in green house gas emissions as of two years ago, which would mean the effective abandonment of technological civilization as it is presently enjoyed by the vast majority of the world.
Not gonna happen for one simple reason.
Greed.
Are you really ready to go to a 50 mile diet, let alone a 100 mile diet? Are you willing to live in your car, while it sits permanently emplaced in your victory garden? Could you sacrifice every single electronic toy you use?
Didn't think so.
Until such a change is forced on our species as a necessity, nothing is going to change, and talk of reductions will remain just that.
More is the pity.
We are just idiot frogs who insist on having the heat turned up until we boil.
Walk in peace.
If you put a wind turbine in front of Obama's face he would generate enough power to watch himself on a big screen plasma TV.
Thank you, Galenwainwright, you've said it brilliantly!
jbentham
a little American history might be of service here...
FDR managed to mobilize US citizens to get behind a major world war just two decades after "the war to end all wars", the Great War, had ended. Men of all remotely-acceptable ages enlisted. women worked in factories. victory gardens and an acceptance of rationing sprang up everywhere. And all this despite the fact that in there was plenty of resistance, a great chunk of the citizenry insisting it was "not our war." People in droves, very nearly en masse, signing on for more rounds of hardship and taking personal pride in doing it. So how did this happen?
Well, arguably it helped that the Great Depression was even more recent history than the Great War, and had a signal effect on the extent of people's aspirations as well as their expectations. the actual decline of economic growth rescripted their lives in significant ways. We're experiencing some of this rescripting now, due to the recession that will not speak its name.... The potential holocaust of world climate out of control is at least as demonic a possibility as a Hitlerian takeover of the free world.... in short, the right guy on the soap box has a lot to work with at this point in time, and if even a handful of the pending bubble collapses occur there will be just that much more.
It can take a terrific act of will to galvanize oneself into optimism these days, so perhaps a more modest goal is to let weeds grow under your car axles, shower out of doors where the lettuce can share your water usage, hang out your laundry (or dry it on racks or lines strung up indoors) and reduce your electric bill to five or six dollars a month. How-to books need to be written by people who have rassled with these issues on a penny-pinched, down-and-dirty practical daily bases for a few years or decades or so. there are a number of us out here. maybe our time has come.