Op-eds

It seems as if proponents of tough measures on climate change have fallen on hard times.

President Obama, who campaigned for strong U.S. leadership to fight global warming, has backpedaled. The Senate, preoccupied with health care and a troubled economy, hasn't made climate change a priority. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada says the Senate may not vote on the issue until well into 2010 - long after this week's meeting in Copenhagen on climate change.

Meanwhile, atmospheric temperatures over the past few years haven't continued their steady upward climb, effectively idling Al Gore in that cherry picker he used so effectively in An Inconvenient Truth. Has global warming hit the back burner with barely a pilot light to keep it warm? Keep an eye on that pilot light. Those stalled atmospheric temperatures may have to do with decades-long cycles in the movement of warm and cool oceanic waters.

Recent efforts to model these cycles predict, with considerable accuracy, the global temperature plateau. They also predict a continued, overall warming trend in the long-term as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, in the policy arena, numerous retired U.S. military leaders are calling climate change a "threat multiplier." Among other concerns, the Pentagon is pondering the consequences of chronic failed harvests and shrinking water supplies in such unstable countries as Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, and Nigeria. Think social unrest, mass migrations, breeding grounds for terrorists.

Leaders in China, India, and Pakistan are mindful of these risks, too. They are among the countries most likely to suffer from water scarcity as climate change dries up mountain snowpack and disrupts the monsoon season.

Yet, China and India, the two largest greenhouse gas emitters in the developing world, steadfastly refuse to sign any agreement requiring cuts in their own emissions. So why should the United States sign an agreement that other major emitters reject? The answer depends on the pact that replaces the Kyoto Protocol.

Using the House cap-and-trade bill as a benchmark, the United States would agree to "Kyoto-lite" - a set of targets and a timetable that is arguably weaker than the provisions agreed to by most advanced industrialized countries in 1997. And in all likelihood, the final bill that lands on Obama's desk will be even less stringent than the House version.

The United States could justify its insistence on Kyoto-lite because in sheer volumetric terms, it may end up agreeing to reduce more greenhouse gases than any other single nation. America will also be a big contributor to a future financial/technology aid package for developing countries that need help adapting to climate change.

An international agreement requiring the United States to do what it intends to do anyway, with or without China and India as treaty cosigners, is better than a feeble, "lowest common denominator" agreement that gets China and India on board, but requires no real action.

The United States, China, and India could turn out to be climate heroes if they put their minds to it. Some tantalizing assets are in place.

In fact, China is getting smarter about how it produces and uses energy. Everything from high-tech furnaces at steel mills to newly insulated office buildings is saving energy in China.

China's solar-power and wind-turbine industries compete fiercely with U.S. firms for global market share. Meanwhile, in India, Tata Motors' peppy Nano minicar gets 65 m.p.g., and new alternative-fuel and electric-battery models are in the works.

With that kind of ingenuity and their newfound wealth, China and India, in partnership with the United States, could go a long way in fighting global warming, with or without a resounding diplomatic triumph at Copenhagen.