Thomas Lindaman wrote:
This agreement was never about global climate change and man's impact on it. It was all about getting Obama a victory of some sort in Copenhagen, considering he hasn't had very good luck there this year.
If he needed a victory so badly, why wasn't he there since day one?
His appearance before the International Olympic Committee to try to get the 2016 Summer Olympics to come to Chicago was a bust, and an embarrassing one at that.
Yeah, how embarrassing to have our President support our country.
The reality is that Republicans embarrassed themselves by cheering America losing.
His winning the Nobel Peace Prize has become an international joke.
Funny, the only people bitching about it was Republicans and the Taliban. The rest of the world wished him luck.
Now with the UN climate conference, we're seeing how big a joke it is because of all the bickering and the weather.
"Derpy derp! It's snowing in Copenhagen thus AGW is a fraud!"
In short, Obama needed a victory in Copenhagen. After coming off as a laughingstock the last two times he went there, his ego couldn't take another blow, so he was looking to come away with something, anything, to make the third time truly become a charm. But what this agreement has done is made him look desperate and incapable of being an effective world leader.
Obama did NOT have a legal mandate. He wasn't in any position to make any significant binding commitments and everyone already knew that in advance. It was a good political move on his part to avoid any substantial involvement to avoid entanglements that would only backfire on him politically at home. Was anyone really expecting him to do much? Do American presidents posses some sort of magic that enables them to fly into town at the last minute and save the day like Superman? The GOPer meme is to blame Barack Obama, personally, for every problem in the known universe. "The prophet of imperfection! I'm writing in Lizard People on my next ballot! So they reached an agreement on nothing that was binding! Uh-huh!" And on and on. By UN rules, an agreement needs to be unanimous to be binding. Were you expecting miracles from a process with 200 nations when one of the most significant players was not prepared to make binding commitments? What do you want? Forcing other countries to agree by force of arms? The right-wingers are just pissed off because they were looking for him to give in MORE. He didn't. He played hardball and got a deal from the CHINESE. An agreement to keep negotiating was the best possible outcome. This is "to be continued". And we need to make the most of it. Negotiations will continue, and this will provide the opportunity for NGOs to apply pressure and governments to negotiate internally and externally before the next round. COP-15 is the first step, not the last. It's not the sort of success some people were hoping for, but those hopes had no relation to reality in the first place. Copenhagen was developing nation reality punching developed world arrogance in the gut. Copenhagen has ripped away the screens and left our eyes open to the immensity of the problem. Sure, no big agreement, but no more stumbling around in the dark. That's a much bigger win, even if it stings for the moment. I'm okay with supporting it because that's the way that a lot of big environmental regulation has to get passed (Clean Air Act, Montreal Protocol, etc.), only to be strengthened sufficiently later. These agreements are essential to the future of the world. Throwing up hands at the failure to produce a miracle in 2 weeks is childish and typical of Republicans.
And the Left was concerned about how America was perceived in the world when George W. Bush was President?
Obama, unlike George W. Bush, isn't dumb as a stump and actually acknowledges the threat of global climate change. The only people "laughing at Obama" are you right-wingers who will hate him no matter what he does.
There was someone being laughed at, though: Republican Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK). This stupid hick with no education on climate and its changes goes to Copenhagen for a few hours, unilaterally decided he speaks for America and in the process is ridiculed by the European press and comes back with his tail between his legs. Republicans, welcome to how the world views you. He was lucky he didn't get a reporter who drilled him on what he actually knows about global warming and him responding with the typical desperate denier points: "Um, water vapor! Climategate! Hockey sticks! Sunspots! Hiding The Decline! Cultists! Nature Tricks!" I would have loved for him to claim that it's cooled since 1998. Europeans love hearing that line.
The Republican party has gone to great lengths to demonstrate to the world that they consider the rest of the world (and half of America) the Enemy. But no, it's somehow Obama's fault. What's funniest about all this, is that absolutely nothing would be happening under a Republican administration. No agreements at all. Just like no health care reform at all. All Republicans have now is an unpatriotic hope for failure, and a hope that America forgets what they did to this great nation.
But what would one expect from a group of people who's only knowledge of Copenhagen is this:
