Copenhagen: History is Watching

It goes without saying that a leader’s first judge will invariably be his or her own people. Presidents and prime ministers live or die, come election time, by their policies, by how well they have adapted to events beyond their control and by how effectively they have handled the three most rudimentary tasks of government: protecting the population from external threats, maintaining law and order and handling the economy. But there are times when certain momentous decisions have much further reaching consequences, when a leader must look beyond the short-term popularity and practicality of a policy, because it is not just their people who will judge them, but history itself.

In seven days, the leaders of the world’s nations will meet in Copenhagen to agree a framework for tackling climate change. As George Monbiot told me in an interview with The Third Estate in September, “The chances of preventing a two degrees rise in global temperatures are now pretty slight and diminishing rapidly.” Quite simply, he argued, the damage has already been done. To understand the gravity of the situation, a two degree rise in global temperatures is all that is needed to destroy half the rainforest and with it one of the largest carbon sinks on Earth.

Even at present, 13,000 sq km of sea ice in the Antarctic Peninsula have been lost over the last 50 years, Bangladesh is suffering floods that make Cockermouth look like a dry day in the Sahara and entire glaciers in the Andes, upon which millions depend for clean drinking water, have vanished. There are some who would bury their heads in the sand, pointing to the ill-chosen words of a few scientists discussing methodology, arguing that the tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide we are pumping into the atmosphere is having no effect on our climate, whilst ignoring the dramatic changes that are happening here and now all around us. History will judge the inane outpourings of Melanie Phillips too. But if we are to prevent the catastrophe of runaway climate change, resulting from growing emissions and shrinking carbon sinks no longer able to offset them, then we have to act now. Copenhagen may well be our last chance to make a difference. That can only happen with America on board.

It is abundantly clear that Barack Obama paints himself as a transformative figure. His rhetoric, his sloganeering, his grand speeches all look to history and his place in it. Unfortunately, his policies point no further than the next election. At present he is doing little more than papering over the cracks of the worst injustices of the Bush administration. Necessary steps to be sure, but still just tinkering around the edges. His pledges to close Guantanamo, pull soldiers from Iraq and his piddling lukewarm proposals to reform America’s barbaric healthcare system will, in the long run, prove fairly irrelevant. When history looks back at his place in it, what will it see? A leader who was better than George Bush? Not exactly hard to find. The slightly more humane face of American Empire? We’ve seen it all before. America’s first black president? Not enough.

Obama will travel to Copenhagen on December 10th, the day before he collects his Nobel Peace Prize (awarded, unlike most prizes, for potential effort rather than attainment) in Oslo. Whether he deserves that honour will depend on what he brings to the table. At present he is offering a 17% cut to the carbon emissions of history’s greatest polluter by 2020. Far too little, far too late – not least because, whilst the rest of the world is pledging cuts to 1990 levels, Obama’s are only to 2005 levels. Since US emissions have risen by around 15% since 1990, what Obama is effectively offering is little more than a 2% cut over the next ten years. Hardly the stuff of which history is made.

As Monbiot, a keen supporter of the 10:10 campaign, said: “We need a 10% cut in the coming year. And then a 10% cut in the following year. Otherwise the cumulative emissions will push us above two degrees and more without any question.”

Obama will struggle to get these radical, but necessary proposals through Congress. He will take a beating from American business leaders; he’ll face an onslaught from the attack dogs of FOX News and a backlash from Middle America’s families whose gas guzzling SUVs will be prised only from their cold dead fingers. But it is time for the man who once told the world ‘yes we can’ to make a stand. If he truly sees himself as a transformative figure, he cannot afford to look no further than the next election. Because, in the long game, when all is said and done, it will not be the electorate that judges him. History is already watching.