President Obama’s trip to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit cannot be seen as a success, although it is not a failure.
At the last minute, there was an agreement to set limits on greenhouse gases among China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa.
However, the agreement does not contain verification or enforcement mechanisms, and one gets the feeling that obtaining such guarantees at the next summit in Mexico City in 2010 is highly unlikely.
The world faces a crisis, but unfortunately, politics and nationalism and secrecy of dicatatorships such as China will make it probably impossible to forge agreements that are truly binding.
Also, the politics of climate change are in full swing in this country, with such critics as Sarah Palin and James Inhofe on full assault against the administration, as well as Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger and other supporters of the concept of global warming.
So the truth is one should not expect much progress on climate change legislation in America, although supposedly the Obama Administration is optimistic on “cap and trade” legislation early next year. But even with that possibly occurring, there must be world wide cooperation for the global warming crisis to be dealt with seriously.