After G20 Climate disappointment Obama pledges US lead

Monday, 06 April 2009 10:49

US President Barack Obama has announced that the United States was ready to take the lead in tackling climate change at a meeting in Prague Sunday 5 April with EU leaders. "To protect our planet, now is the time to change the way that we use energy," Obama said in his only public speech during his first European tour. 

"Together we must confront climate change by ending the world's dependency on fossil fuels by tapping the power from the sources of energy like the wind and the sun and calling upon all nations to do their part.
"And I pledge to you that in this global effort the US is now ready to lead."

Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission chief said there was genuine change in US policy; the new administration was "much clearer and more ambitious" on climate change. 

 G20 disappointment

The Summit in Prague followed the G20 meeting in London which was President Obama´s debut on the world scene. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was encouraged "that the G20 leaders recognized the inextricable links between addressing the economic crisis and addressing food security and climate change."  The UN top climate official, Yvo de Boer, of the UNFCCC said words were good, but action better.

Many commentators have, however, criticized the outcome. “It was meant, in Gordon Brown's words, to strike "a global green new deal" to tackle climate change and pull the world out of recession at the same time,” wrote the Independent of London. “ In fact, the G20 meeting has sharply put back the chance of an international pact to stop global warming running out of control. Far from being at the heart of last week's London summit, the looming climate crisis was relegated to a brief, vague and weaselly-worded afterthought at the very end of the communiqué. This has had an immediate dampening effect on negotiations on a new treaty supposed to be agreed at a vital meeting in Copenhagen at the end of the year.”