Obama still heading to Copenhagen
According to the White House, President Obama is still planning to leave for the Copenhagen climate change summit tonight. . The President’s plans remain unchanged even though the climate talks are reportedly in disarray and his heath care legislation is “on the precipice”.
To help spur the climate talks along, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday proposed that the world’s major economies fund $100 billion a year over the next decade for developing nations to fight climate change.
But, as the Washington Post reports, there will be no major treaty and there may not even be a political agreement coming out of this summit.
James Inhofe (R-OK), the Senate’s leading skeptic on man-made global warming, bluntly told reporters in Copenhagen, “The United States is not going to pass cap and trade. It just isn’t going to happen. Its chances are zero.” According to Inhofe only 25 senators support the cap and trade bill that passed the House in June.
Despite the lack of accord in Copenhagen, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, nonetheless, is leading a contingent of 20 House members (including six Republicans) to the summit. The Washington Examiner reports that the Speaker ’s focus of the trip is not global warming, but job creation. Pelosi indicated that the lawmakers “will meet with representatives from countries involved in the climate talks as well as business leaders and advocacy groups, ‘to discuss job creation.’”
