Fears Barack Obama will omit climate change from State of Union speech

Environmental organisations believe Obama is being urged to downplay climate change during this year's speech

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 17.57 GMT
Global warming – a signature issue for Barack Obama – is at risk of getting the short shrift in this year's State of the Union speech on Wednesday, further shrinking the already slim prospects of getting a climate change law through Congress, environmentalists say.
Obama is being lobbied hard to send a strong signal that climate change remains at the top of his agenda and issue a forceful call to Congress to move forward on legislation this year.
"I think the president needs to underscore that climate and energy reform is a priority for 2010 as specifically as possible," said Senator John Kerry, who has been leading the effort to get a climate bill in the Senate.
Environmental organisations believe some Obama aides are advising the president to downplay or even avoid mention of the words "climate change" and keep the speech tightly focused on jobs and the economy, especially after last week's upset in Senate elections cost the Democrats' their super majority in Congress.
Those organisations will be watching Obama's speech closely to see whether he comes out for "comprehensive" legislation – code for the sweeping energy and climate change proposals to cut America's carbon emissions that are now before Congress.
The uncertainty about climate change legislation spills over into the international arena, where US inaction could be used as an excuse by India and China to further delay action on global warming.
"There has always been nervousness on whether the administration is playing an aggressive enough role," said Steve Cochran of the Environmental Defence Fund.
"[Everyone is] looking to see what he might say in the State of the Union to suggest the administration continues to move forward on this agenda, or that they are going to back off somehow because of a variety of political realities."
Officially, Kerry is continuing his efforts with a small group of Republican and Democratic Senators to craft a compromise climate and energy bill that would win support across party lines.
"The reports that climate change legislation are dead are way premature," said David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. But the Democrats can not get a bill through the Senate on their own. "In order to get past 60 votes the bill has to have things in it that appeal to moderate Republicans and maybe even some very conservative Republicans," he said.
But Democratic leaders in the Senate have begun more openly to scale back ambitions since last week's defeat. Some are now calling for a few clean energy proposals to be tacked on to a larger jobs bill.
Obama hinted at such a combination during a visit to Ohio last Friday, urging Congress to pass a jobs bill that would "offer families incentives to make their homes more energy efficient, saving them money while creating jobs".
Other senators, Democratic and Republican, would like to focus first on an energy bill that would promote the use of renewable energy such as wind and solar but would not lay the foundations of a carbon market, which critics say would damage the US economy. Such an energy bill could also expand offshore drilling. "A large cap-and-trade bill isn't going to ahead at this time," Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California, said last week.
Other Democratic senators have called for reframing energy and climate change as a national security issue, which would help win Republican support.
But conservative Democrats say that it would be a mistake to take on such a sweeping project after the collapse of healthcare reform. "My own sense is that in the aftermath of a very, very heavy lift on healthcare, I think it is unlikely that the Senate will turn next to the very complicated and controversial subject of cap-and-trade climate legislation," said Senator Bryan Dorgan.