Doing what we say

“There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say.” 

- President Obama, speaking to world leaders at the Copenhagen climate summit December 18.

With climate negotiations in Copenhagen on the verge of collapse, President Obama narrowly averted a total disaster with a strong show of determination and some deft eleventh-hour negotiating.  The talks failed to produce a formal and comprehensive commitment to climate solutions, but they did deliver some important pieces of the puzzle. Top-level engagement from the world’s two largest emitters, the U.S. and China, is new and essential.

The President was dealt a weak hand by the U.S. Senate’s failure to adopt comprehensive climate and energy legislation before the negotiations. Other factors contributed, but the Senate’s punt set the stage for the tepid result in Copenhagen. The world will not move forward decisively until the U.S. is in with both feet - and both houses of Congress.

Understanding America‘s pivotal role, Obama leaned forward and made a definitive-sounding pledge: “We have made our commitments, and we will do what we say.” But he can’t make it stick until Congress finishes its work. The window is short: scientific, diplomatic, and political imperatives demand immediate action.

The President is clearly engaged—a huge step one on America’s road to recovering its credibility in the international process, after heckling from the sidelines for eight years. Six of his cabinet Secretaries came to the summit and impressed the world with their focus and administrative actions to date. But the stark truth about our weak standing in the negotiations remains: The nation that has contributed the most to global warming still has no national climate policy.

I went to Copenhagen in part to demonstrate the breadth of action and commitment to climate solutions in the U.S., especially at the state and local level. Governor Gregoire did Washington proud, positioning our state as a growing job market in the expanding global clean energy economy.  But international colleagues and delegates cross-examined me about our broken federal legislative process, and why it has been so slow to deliver. I have a lot of theories, but no remotely adequate excuse. The U.S. must step up—and in a stark, defiant, powerful sentence, the President promised we would: “We will do what we say.”

To be clear, “what we say”—the emission reduction target the President put on the table—is not nearly enough to do our part in staving off catastrophic climate disruption. It’s far less than other developed nations have pledged. But it was the effective constraint that Congress imposed and the President accepted on America’s ambition in Copenhagen.
So the immediate question is, How will the President make good on his commitment?   The only really meaningful test of whether “we will do what we say” is whether the Senate gets cracking on it immediately after health care. But they won’t do it unless the President leads the charge with a lot more gusto.

Senate leadership is afraid of this issue. They’re afraid of losing seats in the midterms. They’re afraid that opponents will successfully frame climate and energy policy as a job killer. They’re afraid of another bruising political battle after health care.  But fear itself is what’s killing them.

Give the American people some credit:  we know that fossil fuel dependence an economic dead end and an environmental disaster.  We’re ready for leaders to get real about what it takes to kick the habit. The President has demonstrated the winning politics of this: Democratic and Republican rivals offered campaign lollipops last summer - gas tax holidays and drilling binges - while candidate Obama called for a bold energy transformation. He won.

The President ran on this issue. He believes in it. He understands its transformative economic power and the moral imperative to tackle it. He mined the rich political ore of our frustration with Washington’s chronic failure to address our fossil fuel addiction. The question now is whether he will forge that raw material into the steely resolve he’ll need to get an effective climate and energy bill done.

Ducking this battle would undermine the President. He vowed to stand up to the oil and coal interests that have blocked our path to energy security and climate solutions.  He was elected in part because he picked this fight.  Now he needs to have it and win.