Barack Obama is right to visit the Copenhagen climate talks. The meeting will achieve less than was once hoped for, and Mr Obama's hands, to be sure, are tied by domestic politics. But his personal commitment is still valuable.
Governments have already said that the meeting will produce no new treaty to curb greenhouse gases. And Mr Obama's proposal to cut US emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020 amounts to little, as yet. Bills aiming to achieve such cuts – smaller, in any case, than those proposed by the European Union – are bogged down in Congress. But it is not nothing that Mr Obama signals his determination to make progress.
US commitment to this task is indispensable and there would be little hope of such commitment if Mr Obama were unwilling to spend some of his diminishing stock of political capital on the endeavour.
Despite the fact that the time- table for a post-Kyoto system of controls has slipped, making the Copenhagen meeting less definitive than first envisaged, other changes are pushing the right way. Most important, China and India are shifting on the issue.
China has said it will cut its carbon emissions per unit of output by 40-45 per cent by 2020, which would slow the rise in emissions substantially, even allowing for rapid economic growth. Neither country, intent on boosting incomes, is about to sign up to binding caps. But they are no longer insisting that carbon abatement is none of their affair.
In view of their size and their likely growth in the next few decades, finding a way to bring China and India into a global carbon abatement system is crucial. Their willingness to see and discuss a common interest in this is the first step – and that discussion, perfunctory until now, has begun. Copenhagen should carry this forward.
China's and India's involvement is invaluable in another way. It would lessen resistance to firm action in the US. Attention paid to the climate-science emails scandal has, for the moment, strengthened this resistance. Remember too that the Kyoto Protocol, though endorsed by the Clinton administration, was overwhelmingly rejected by both parties in Congress. This was partly because it asked the US for a greater sacrifice than others and called for no contribution from the emerging mega-emitters. Efforts by China and India will help the Obama administration win the argument at home.
In the same spirit, Copenhagen could start to welcome greater flexibility in national carbon reduction regimes. Binding quantitative targets are difficult to negotiate, and then, as the Kyoto countries went on to prove, difficult to enforce. Every approach has drawbacks, but a post-Kyoto framework would better succeed if it were more open-minded about approaches to abatement. Carbon targets, carbon-intensity targets like China's, and carbon-price targets can all play a part. The new regime should strive for effective co-operation, not pointless uniformity. It is a point Mr Obama could mention when he drops by.
