Reply #37: I'll take that bet.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

Your problem is that you seem to believe that the only test of leadership is solving the climate crisis.

Your straw man argument won’t wash. “Only” (your word) is not a synonym for “transcendent” (my word). I certainly appreciate that world hunger is a profound humanitarian and national security issue.

It’s easy to come up with a list of incredibly important issues for America. Poor nutrition and hunger right here. Major educational reform is needed. In particular we need to study the policies advocated by Arne Duncan and then set off to reform education in exactly the opposite way, for the most part. We need a federal “Clean Money” statute, in order to have real democratic elections in the age of television. We need media outlets without a corporate bias, like the BBC. We need real health care reform. We need guaranteed housing. We need to bust up the giant corporate behemoths. We need robust organized labor, a living wage, etc. We need a redistribution of wealth so that the poor and the middle class make economic progress again. Basically we need to end the Age of Reagan and get back to Jeffersonian principles.

But none of that will mean a damn thing if Pennsylvania becomes beach front property in a couple of decades, or tropical diseases resistant to antibiotics break out in the south or the Midwest becomes a desert. If you don’t plug the leak in your life boat it doesn’t matter whether you repair your fishing net. That is why climate change is the transcendant issue.

In the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen the African delegation walked out in disgust. People are dying in droves right now because of the desertification of Africa. This isn’t some ivory tower issue about the future. People are suffering and dying right now. That’s why the Africans walked out.

Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G77 group of developing nations, greeted the news that rich countries will spend a mere $10-billion helping poor states cope with climate change by saying that it was "not enough to buy us coffins."

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/12/copenhagen-w...

Here is how Naomi Klein assessed Obama’s role in Copenhagen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/...

For the most important issue of our time, Obama gets an F-. It would have been better if the Copenhagen conference had not occurred. At least we would have still had the Kyoto emission standards in place. Obama took the easy way out, pushing the anemic standards out to 2020. Shame on him. He is the first Democratic president not to make progress in a climate treaty, following in the tradition of both Bush presidencies. The audacity of Copenhagen will live in infamy.