Copenhagen Blog - Obama's speech moves US position by inches when we need him to go the extra mile

Written by George Lyon and published in the Steamie blog on Fri 18th Dec 2009

What did we learn from President Obama's address to the Copenhagen conference? The answer to that has to be 'not much'.

The scheduled proceedings were delayed by two hours as Obama held talks with nineteen other world leaders in a closed session. We thought that we might get some answers after they emerged and Obama took to the podium but no, not even a hint of progress.

We got the same resounding rhetoric from the President. He told us that he believes now "is the time for the nations and the people of the world to come together behind a common purpose." He added that world leaders were ready to get the job done today.

Good, because many delegates and even more protesters think they might have to wait to COP16 in Mexico for a legally binding agreement.

What we heard from Obama was not enough at this late stage. To give him credit, Obama has thrown down the gauntlet to China on the transparency issue and that gave a certain amount of positive momentum to proceedings yesterday.

But there has been very little movement in terms of targets from America. At the start of the process they said they would commit to a 17% cut in CO2 emissions below 2005 levels by 2020. This equates to about 4% below 1990 levels.

Let's put that in context. The African delegation, who walked out earlier in the week, wants a commitment to 40% cuts below 1990 levels. That is a huge gulf to bridge with only hours remaining of the Conference.

I hoped for more movement towards the European Parliament's position of 20:2020 - 20% reduction by 2020, with room to move up to 30% if other big emitters commit to big cuts.

President Obama's speech moved America forward by inches only. With the clock ticking we need every country to go the extra mile.