Obama as White Knight: Naked Ambition at COP15
by Tod Brillian, postcarbon.com, December 18, 2009
From Wikipedia: 'Emperor's New Clothes' has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness. Naomi Wood of Kansas State University wrote, "Perhaps the truth of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is . . . that it recognizes the terrifying possibility that whatever words we may use to clothe our fears, the fabric cannot protect us from them."
Barack Obama’s honeymoon with both the environmental community and greater Europe has come to a end. At Øksnehallen hall in Copenhagen, loud boos fill the room. Hundreds of NGO representatives and media members have responded to a live telecast of the President’s utterly disappointing speech with loudly derisive grunts moans and hisses.
Obama, who descended from the sky in Air Force One a few hours ago to a Copenhagen largely cleared of the nonprofit ‘riff raff’ (in an effort to stifle calls for meaningful progress, access to the proceedings was reduced from 15,000 to just 90 in advance of his arrival), by now must be feeling that his attempt to play the role of white knight has failed. We’ll meet our aggressive reduction goals of 17% by 2020. Boos. The United States is serious about addressing climate change. Hisses. Obama’s delivery was flat, uninspired. Given the chance to ignite the world at what is arguably the most significant moment in history, the man mailed it in. Perhaps he’s over used to talking to his fellow Americans, whose languorous tongues swallow pills and lies with ease. The Europeans here are better informed and saw through his overlong delivery as uninspired rhetoric.
This all adds up to a significant accord.
The boo birds flutter toward their laptops, readying reports of the U.S. President’s latest failure to step up. As the world watched, Obama’s well-tailored suit jacket and blue tie vanished into thin air. I’ll buy the man a poncho in Mexico City (COP16) next year.
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