Yes he can: Obama finally decides to spend a day at the climate change talks

Tim Reid in Washington

President Obama will travel to Copenhagen next month to attend the climate change conference, the White House announced yesterday, ending weeks of uncertainty over whether he would go, and intense pressure from Europe for him to do so.
Mr Obama will take to the summit a US commitment to make substantial cuts in greenhouse gas pollution over the next two decades, removing one of the greatest obstacles to a deal in Copenhagen. But he will attend only the first day of the summit, so he is likely to miss the key decision-making phase, and opposition to emissions legislation in the US Senate is likely to make it difficult for him to enforce the promised targets.
Mr Obama will offer to cut emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, by 30 per cent before 2025 and by 42 per cent before 2030. The White House said that the targets represented a “pathway” to Mr Obama’s goal of cutting American emissions by 83 per cent by 2050. Until yesterday the US, the world’s biggest polluter after China, had been the only developed nation not to announce emissions targets before the conference.
Mr Obama’s intended presence and the targets were welcomed in Europe after weeks of lobbying by governments, including Britain, for him to attend. “It’s critical that President Obama attend,” said Yvo de Boer, the United Nations climate chief.

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The White House has spent weeks vacillating over whether Mr Obama should attend the conference, but an aide said it was decided that he should go to give the talks momentum. After he attends the summit on December 9, he will fly to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize.
At least 75 world leaders, including Gordon Brown, will attend the summit. Unlike Mr Obama, most are expected to gather for the final days of the conference, which runs until December 18.
Mr Obama conceded during his trip to China this month that a binding climate change treaty with firm emissions targets to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol — the very purpose of the Copenhagen summit — was beyond reach, despite two years of negotiations.
The most that can be salvaged is a “political agreement”, with individual nations setting their own targets, which Mr Obama said on Tuesday night he hoped would lay the groundwork for a binding treaty next year. Hopes of a meaningful deal in Copenhagen look far from assured because China has signalled that it is unlikely to cut emissions for now. It has also so far failed to offer a reduction target before the conference.
Yu Qingtai, China’s special envoy to the summit, accused developed nations of failing to fulfil pledges made under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and defended his Government’s refusal to accept mandatory emissions cuts at the meeting. “When a nation is in a period of fast-paced industrialisation and urbanisation, energy consumption and total emissions go up rapidly,” he said.
Mr Obama’s initial target of a 17 per cent cut by 2020 is in line with legislation before the US Congress. Yet it is stalled in the US Senate with little hope of passage, casting serious doubt on the President’s ability to enforce reduction targets back home.
Republicans and some Democrats in the Senate claim that Mr Obama’s cap-and-trade legislation will be costly to US business at a time of expanding deficits and high unemployment.
Mr Obama had hoped that he could attend the Copenhagen conference with climate change legislation already passed. China’s reluctance to make significant concessions will further complicate those efforts, because many senators will argue that China — a rapidly rising economic rival to the US — is failing to do its part.
The White House hopes that Mr Obama’s Copenhagen visit will strengthen the US Government’s shift on climate change policy after eight years of the Bush Administration, which opposed broad mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.
Cabinet officials including Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, and Gary Locke, the Commerce Secretary, will also go to Copenhagen in the most senior contingent of American officials to take part in international climate talks.