Obama's Pact Is Slap at Progressive Ideals

The Copenhagen climate deal President Obama struck with China, India and South Africa flies in the face of progressive values, environmental writer Bill McKibben rages. Here’s how:

• Obama made the UN obsolete: “The clear point is, you poor nations can spout off all you want on questions like human rights or the role of women or fighting polio or handling refugees. But when you get too close to the center of things that count—the fossil fuel that’s at the center of our economy—you can forget about it.”

• The parties to the deal are now “a league of super-polluters”: “It is no accident that the targets are weak to nonexistent,” McKibben writes for Grist, for this “coalition of foxes.”
• His resolve will play well in the US—and that’s a bad thing. “Having spurned Europe and the poor countries of the world … Obama has taken the mandate that progressives worked their hearts out to give him, and used it to gut the ideas that progressives have held most dear.”

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