Friday, December 11, 2009

Obama's "Second Chance"

Okay, so all that stuff in Oslo about "a just war" and fighting evil-doers (shades of Dubya) wasn't exactly what the Norwegians had in mind when they tapped Obama to receive their fancy prize. Now that his speech is out of the way, some eco-freaks are hoping he'll redeem himself in Copenhagen:
Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama had not even accepted his Nobel Prize in Oslo yesterday before environmental advocates began calling on him to earn it when he attends climate talks in Copenhagen next week.

“Obama, in part, has been awarded the Nobel Prize with the expectation that he will deliver the kind of leadership necessary to get a climate treaty,” Greenpeace USA’s Damon Moglen said on Dec. 9, a day before Obama won the same prestigious award given to Al Gore two years ago for his work on climate change. “He won it, and now is the time to earn it.”

The U.S. president, during his speech yesterday in Norway, warned about the dangers of climate change and called on countries to work together to confront the problem. Obama will attend the treaty negotiations in Copenhagen on Dec. 18, the last day of the meetings that started this week. He initially planned to make an appearance nine days earlier on Dec. 9.

Many developing countries considered the earlier date a “thumb in the eye” to other leaders coming in the second week during the “high level” portion of the talks for a new global accord to control greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea’s special envoy for climate change.

“I’m a lot more positive about a positive outcome since Obama changed his arrival date,” Conrad said in an interview yesterday.

Yesterday in Oslo, at least one protester held a sign reading “Our Climate. Your Decision.”

‘Earn It’

In Copenhagen, where the United Nations is holding its 15th annual “conference of the parties,” or COP15, an international meeting on climate change, environmental groups handed out stickers reading “Obama: Win it in Oslo. Earn it at COP15.”...
This UN climate mishegas has been going on for 15 years? OMG. Think of how much "cooler" the planet would be today had all that hot air not been expended.

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