Happy Anniversary, Obama. Now Sign a Climate Deal

It's been a year
since Barack Obama's historic election as our first African-American
president. That night, many Americans shed tears of joy, exchanged
congratulatory embraces, and voiced high expectations for real change.

As the Obama
administration's first year draws to a close, we're approaching another
historic moment. The world's nations are negotiating a deal to steer
the planet away from catastrophic climate change. And by December, if
an agreement is reached at a summit in Copenhagen, developed countries
like the United States will have to step forward and put binding
targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions on the table.

Yes, developing
countries-with their increasing carbon footprints-should come to the
table, too (and in fact, many are already making great strides at
implementing renewable energy and energy efficiency programs). But the
responsibility rests squarely on wealthy industrialized nations to own
up to our historical role in causing the climate crisis and make the
first move. And legally, developed countries have an obligation to
direct financial and technical support to developing nations to enable
them to shift to low-carbon growth pathways.

But our government
says it can't get out ahead of Congress and commit to anything
internationally until lawmakers pass a domestic climate bill.
Meanwhile, Congress says it's waiting for the White House to send the
right signals before pushing hard on targets and climate finance for
poorer countries.

So instead of
leading on climate, as he'd promised to do in campaign speeches,
Obama's administration has called for each country-rich or poor-to
simply pledge its individual domestic climate commitment. This
"bottom-up" approach, as U.S. negotiators call it, sounds like a
grassroots effort, but in reality it means that countries will offer up
as little as they think is politically feasible, a global cap on
greenhouse gases that keeps us safe be damned.

If Obama misses the
mark on climate change this December it won't just hurt people in
countries like the Maldives-an island nation that's likely to disappear
under the Indian Ocean before the end of the century. It puts those of
us who put Obama in power at risk, too. Without a strong global deal,
low-income communities and communities of color, which are most
vulnerable to climate impacts, will begin to feel the brunt of coastal
flooding, more extreme weather events, water scarcity and costlier
food. Our workers will be at a disadvantage as green energy sectors in
other parts of the world are bolstered by their governments while the
United States lags behind. And our children and their children will
suffer, thanks to the short-term vision of business-as-usual in
Washington.

What we need Obama
to do now is direct his administration to negotiate a just, binding,
and effective deal in Copenhagen, with emissions cuts from developed
countries of at least 45% by 2020 from 1990 levels. And we need the
United States to take the lead in creating a Global Climate Fund under
the authority of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that
supports the just transition to low-carbon economies in developing
countries.

I believe that Obama, like the country he leads, can still make a change for the better.

This article was distributed by Minuteman Media.