One year on from inauguration and month on from Copenhagen what has happened to our hope that the US would finally act on climate justice?

by Iestyn Davies

Anniversaries come and go.  But none have passed with greater significance to those of us concerned with climate justice than Obama’s first year in office.  In this policy field like so many others, expectations were running high, probably too high for any one person to ever satisfy. One year on coincides with one month on from the let down that was COP 15 an event that on a global scale will be Obama’s most significant failure but one which will also impact closer to home.

When he addressed the delegates at the summit less than a month ago he stated, in typically Obama fashion, “The question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge – the question is our capacity to meet it.” As the world waited for his arrival at the Bella Center the belief that only he could seal the deal was almost palpable. Other world leaders had come, and to all intents and purposes gone. But despite the presidential rhetoric that promised much, climate change campaigners were unimpressed by the US’s actions.

US scientist and the public face of the 350.org campaign Bill McKlibben blasted the attempts to arrive at an outcome. “This is a declaration”, he claimed,  “that small and poor countries don’t matter, that international civil society doesn’t matter, and that serious limits on carbon don’t matter.”  The decision by the US to act independently with a small coterie of nations effectively sealed not a lasting and meaningful deal to cut omissions but the fate of small low-lying nations.  One such country, the Maldives, whose island population is never any more than six feet above sea level stands to loose most. Its president, Mohamed Nasheed, a former political prisoner addressed the representatives of civic society at the Klimaforum the alternative climate conference which hosted two weeks of events carefully overlooked by the world’s media in their search for violence and anarchy.

Nasheed, set out the reality facing Obama. His willingness to negotiate and find consensus is well known. But, there are some times, whether it is on healthcare at home, or climate change on the global stage a President simply has to deliver. Time is ticking away and a nice win-win solution is not on the table when it comes to climate justice. As Nasheed pointed out you can negotiate with politicians but not with physics. Obama has never publically doubted the science of climate change something that many of us are willing to be agnostic about at the best of times. So given that he finds the arguments of science so compelling why did he think that the Copenhagen fudge would get him by? Why didn’t he deliver? What’s stopping him getting real on this policy area while he still has the time? Is it as McKlibben stated because he wanted to shore up his reputation as a tough American leader?

Faced with such enormous domestic, foreign and global challenges he has become too focused on matching the Clinton legacy of time spent in the Whitehouse. However, he cannot afford to limit his actions to the political expedience of running for a two-term presidency. Come the next presidential election more than any other president, he will be judged on what has achieved not on that which he has promised. And for a man who has promised so much to so many, not least the poorest and most vulnerable, action has to come sooner rather than later. In actual fact the twenty-second amendment limits any president to a term of office that is incredibly short when it comes to addressing the most intractable of global and American problems. There will be unfinished business however long he stays in office.

Whilst he worries about his legacy the reactionary right was never going to be swayed by whatever he attempted or achieved so why worry about them? By all counts the Republican Party is quite capable of ensuring its own demise and will never be able to meet the needs of an American electorate that sees that change rather than cynicism and negativity is an option. Those who welcomed his election will forgive him if he fails to meet the improbably high expectations they set but he can be more than he currently is and he needs to be it soon.

So one year on from inauguration and one month on from Copenhagen what can Obama do to reenergize the campaign for climate justice and demonstrate real American commitment? What can he do to demonstrate that he is capable of not only executing credible domestic and foreign policy but also of defining America’s role in Global policy?

He has to ensure that the breakaway nations of China, Brazil and India are hemmed in by a legally binding agreement. In this respect he has to relocate the challenge of climate justice away from the arena of foreign and domestic relations and rediscover what in his own words are the “challenges that no single nation, no matter how powerful, can confront alone.”

He can only do this by working cooperatively with Europe and others. This will demonstrate to his domestic audience that he has not ceded ground to China and that the US is the global superpower mid term voters want – all be it as a distraction from their domestic woes.

For good reason Obama chose to take a chunk out of the domestic policy imperative of healthcare reform early on in his Presidency but to do so and neglect the global agenda of climate justice was probably his biggest failure. He must readdress this balance soon and do so in such a way as to warrant the faith American and many from across the globe put in him.