President Obama and Copenhagen

President Obama has placed himself in a very precarious situation in regard to climate change and his attending the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. The real issue of Copenhagen is the reduction of carbon emissions by all nations! The problem is that developing nations want the wealthier nations to transfer around $30 billion dollars to themselves too help them mitigate the effects of climate change.

The real problem with this is that developing nations want a transfer of wealth to them to help deal with the effects of climate change, but they want it with no strings attached. We are again witnessing the flawed element of the Kyoto Climate Summit in 1998 as the developing world was exempted from making cuts in carbon emissions and the U.S. was forced to make drastic cuts that would have had dramatic effects to the U.S. economy. The U.S. failed to sign the Kyoto Treaty over this objection as China, India, Russia, and the developing world were exempted from making reductions, but the U.S. had to make drastic cuts in emissions.

Again we are seeing the same problems in Copenhagen. China & India are refusing to make deep cuts in carbon emissions and even if they did agree to any sort of reduction, how would it be verified? Right now China is the number one country in the emissions of carbon into the atmosphere.

This is the real dilemma the president has, how do you get an agreement where the Chinese agree to reduce emissions, except independent verifications, convince skeptical Americans on the effects of climate change, and probably the most contentious issues for Americas is the cost of $100 billion dollars to be given to foreign governments especially China.

The president faces frustrated liberal base that wants something now and are growing increasingly irate with this president for failing to deliver on their most cherished issues. The president currently has two highly volatile issues that are increasingly unpopular with the American people; health care and Cap & Trade Legislation.

The president will have to use all manner of persuasion to navigate these treacherous waters or he will return to Washington in a weakened state then when he left. The real problem is he set himself up last year as he would solve all these problems; remember his campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in.”

Change means something different to different people and now he has to govern. The problem that all politicians fall into is that campaigning is far different then governing. This president is now finding out the hard way!