As the world burns

„No diagnosis of the failure of Obama to tackle climate change would be complete without taking into account public opinion. In January, the Pew Research Center asked Americans to rank the importance of twenty-one issues. Climate change came in last. After winning the fight over health care, another issue for which polling showed lukewarm support, Obama moved on to the safer issue of financial regulatory reform. In September, I asked Al Gore why he thought climate legislation had failed. He cited several reasons, including Republican partisanship, which had prevented moderates from becoming part of the coalition in favor of the bill. The Great Recession made the effort even more difficult, he added. »The forces wedded to the old patterns still have enough influence that they were able to use the fear of the economic downturn as a way of slowing the progress toward this big transition that we have to make.«

A third explanation pinpointed how Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman approached the issue. »The influence of special interests is now at an extremely unhealthy level,« Gore said. »And it’s to the point where it’s virtually impossible for participants in the current political system to enact any significant change without first seeking and gaining permission from the largest commercial interests who are most affected by the proposed change.«

Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman were not alone in their belief that transforming the economy required cooperation, rather than confrontation, with industry. American Presidents who have attempted large-scale economic transformation have always had their efforts tempered—and sometimes neutered—by powerful economic interests. Obama knew that, too, and his Administration had led the effort to find workable compromises in the case of the bank bailouts, health-care legislation, and Wall Street reform. But on climate change Obama grew timid and gave up, leaving the dysfunctional Senate to figure out the issue on its own. As the Senate debate expired this summer, a longtime environmental lobbyist told me that he believed the »real tragedy« surrounding the issue was that Obama understood it profoundly. »I believe Barack Obama understands that fifty years from now no one’s going to know about health care,« the lobbyist said. »Economic historians will know that we had a recession at this time. Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.«”