«Obama does it again»

E ao último dia, chegou-se a um acordo em Copenhaga. Longe do acordo ideal, mas bem melhor do que um «fracasso total» que chegou a ser sentenciado precipitadamente.

Obama apareceu no último dia e falou num «meaningful agreement». Talvez tenha sido apenas um «primeiro passo». Mas terá ficado claro quem, entre China e EUA, é o «superpoluente» mais interessado em melhorar as coisas...

«President Obama reportedly was re luctant to attend the final day of the UN's Copenhagen climate-change summit unless it was front-end wired to be a major political success.

But he went anyway, was twice humiliated in public by the Chinese premier and then finally settled for what the White House hailed as a "meaningful agreement."

Really? A top aide admitted that the deal was basically just "an important first step" that was "not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change."

Then Obama himself dropped the other shoe: The agreement contains no specific commitments on carbon emissions, only pledges that "will not be legally binding."

So what the hell was the point?

One would think that Obama had taken a lesson from his last trip to Copenhagen -- when he thought his presence alone would win the 2016 Olympic games for Chicago.

That is, that he would have learned that it is a mistake to publicly commit presidential prestige to an outcome that isn't locked up in advance.

Obviously, not.

So much for two years of work and a supposedly broad international consensus that was to make the Copenhagen conference little more than a formality.

Clearly, yesterday was about squabbling over how much money we'll borrow from the Chinese so that we can give it right back to Beijing and other Third World countries in exchange for their promise to . . . well, that was never clear.

And twice yesterday, Obama was kept waiting in public by China's premier.

This is scary stuff.

Obviously, the rest of the world has taken measure of Barack Obama -- and decided he's a pushover.

On the merits, not unfairly.

Now, we're not going to feign heartbreak over the outcome itself.

The conference was a UN-sponsored effort to pick the West's pockets on behalf of its own bureaucrats, plus assorted Third World kleptocrats, and it deserved to die ignominiously.

As for Obama, it was clear from Day One that he was on a very steep learning curve.

But who imagined it was this steep?»

in New York Post