The whole Obama change thing - he promised health reform, peace in the middle east, action on climate change. USA leading the world.
But he's failing on all fronts. China upstaged him at the UN yesterday, Israel has refused to enter talks with Palestine - insisting that the current talks are talks about talks rather than talks - a sleight to Obama's authority, and the whole health care thing is a mess. It suits me to have a visionary leftish US leader, but he's starting to look weak and ineffective.
Meanwhile the Danes have suggested that the Copehagen Summit in December might not reach any agreement to supercede the Kyoto Protocol, a sentiment no doubt influenced by our current economic turmoil as well as the apparent inability of the US to sign up to anything - Obama's charisma doesn't extend to promising US citizens any infringement of their 'right' to create 19 tonnes of CO2 per head per annum (cf China - less than 5 tonnes).
The US administration is very different under Obama - the whole renewable energy thing is progressing very well - the USA has changed a great deal in a very short time - but world leading? I don't think so.
Maybe we have to shift our focus and cast our hopes onto China. Unencumbered with democracy, the Chinese government has the power, and as a nation they have the economic might to really shake things up. Can they do it? Yes they can. Though I suspect they'll exact a high price for their reforms. They are recent victors of economic wars, in their view the climate is stuffed because of things we've done - and they'll make us pay retribution. Perhaps rightly.
And actually, I think we have to hope they will. China is a strange bed fellow for us lilly livered pinko liberals - sympathisers of Tibet (and all the other ethnic groups getting crushed in China), objectors to huge dam projects, the proliferation of coal power stations and all the rest. But I think I'm pinning my hopes on China to lead the world in Copenhagen in December.
I'm a little queasy about this. But I don't care really. Copenhagen is our last chance to save life on our planet as we know it - and maybe China is our last realistic hope of achieving anything there.
3 comments:
On the whole I'm probably with you on this, but I'm not holding my breath. At the end of the day governments - all governments - will act out of (fairly) short term self-interest, even those who don't have to worry over-much about losing elections. And self interest is usually defined by them as "more for us, even if that means less for you". And China's got the clout to make that approach stick, even in the face of the USA. Tant pis pour nous, peut etre.
In fairness to Obama, he's trying but he's hampered by the loony right - politics over there really is a contact sport. But yes, for world leadership we'll have to look to China. And Scotland, of course.
Anybody got a plan B?
Aye right! I don't particularly blame Obama - I do blame American loonies. Plan B? If we can persuade enough people to hold their breaths in the run up to Copenhagen we might just have a chance...
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