I don’t think President Obama is a member of the eco-faith considering he used to drive a Chrysler 300C with big V8 in it until he launched his Presidential campaign and had to get rid of the car in 2007 and replace it with a hybrid in order to pretend he is a member of the eco-faith.  Even though I doubt he is a member of the eco-faith I definitely believe he is more then willing to pay these eco-religionists lip service and use them to advance his own domestic policy goals:

Putting his prestige on the line, President Barack Obama will personally commit the U.S. to a goal of substantially cutting greenhouse gases at next month’s Copenhagen climate summit. He will insist America is ready to tackle global warming despite resistance in Congress over higher costs for businesses and homeowners.

Obama will attend the start of the conference Dec. 9, a week from next Wednesday, before heading to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. He will “put on the table” a U.S. commitment to cut emissions by 17 percent over the next decade, on the way to reducing heat-trapping pollution by 80 percent by mid-century, the White House said.  [Associated Press]

Think about it, the US is not going to cut greenhouses by 17% in a decade and definitely not by 80% by 2050 judging by the experiences of other nations like Japan who have failed to cut their greenhouses gases despite massive public efforts to do so.

Japan, too, has a long way to go to meet its 6 percent reduction mandated by the treaty. If no additional measures are taken, UN forecasts show Japan’s emissions will instead grow by 6 percent.  [IOL Science]

Canada is probably the best equivalent example for the US to be compared to.  Canada with much fanfare and finger wagging at the US ratified the Kyoto Protocol and subsequently saw their greenhouse gases rise by 24% and it became so expensive that Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut climate change programs all together:

Despite Canada’s vocal support for Kyoto, its greenhouse emissions have risen by 24 percent since 1990, leading Harper’s environmental minister, Rona Ambrose, to declare meeting the goals “impossible.”

Ambrose had already cut a variety of programs aimed at meeting the Kyoto standards, including a much-publicized plan that encouraged individual conservation efforts. Business and oil-producing groups from the oil-rich province of Alberta applauded the government’s pullback on Kyoto.

“We shouldn’t be spending billions of dollars fighting a problem that may not be there,” said Morten Paulsen, a spokesman for a Calgary-based group called Friends of Science, which has criticized the Kyoto accord. He said that arguments that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide are unproven and that “we believe they are a white elephant.”  [Washington Post]

President Obama probably figures that his left wing base is going to be pissed off at this announcement for more troops to Afghanistan and this is a fig leaf to them to keep them happy as well as give him something to hopefully tamper down the America bashing at the upcoming Copenhagen summit.  Also keep in mind that it is easy to make proclamations about cutting carbon emissions decades from now when you are no longer President, so these are all obviously empty promises.

You can’t blame President Obama for playing the lip service game because the Europeans are the masters of it.  The Europeans have been demanding the 40% cuts based off of 1990 levels because they would not have to do anything themselves.  The Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon in 1997, why did they decide to base emission cuts off of 1990 levels when the agreement was signed in 1997?  Likewise why are the Europeans still demanding cuts be based off of 1990 levels today?  Think about it, what happened just after 1990?  The Soviet Union collapsed along with the entire industrial based economies of Eastern Europe.

The Europeans have cleverly grouped themselves together into one big European block for emissions targets because Western Europe’s continuing rise in greenhouse gases is offset by the collapse of the Eastern European economies after the fall of the Soviet Union.  If Western Europe was their own block they would not meet the Kyoto Protocol’s requirements because of their rising greenhouse gas emissions.  That is why they are demanding the 1990 level for cuts.  This allows them to continue with their rising greenhouse gases and then play the holier than thou card against the United States.

If the Japanese with their awesome mass transit system, nuclear reactors, and complex recycling sysem cannot meet the Kyoto Protocol requirements, how can America?

That is why everyone should never forget that this has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with income redistribution:

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

Obama realizes that the Kyoto Protocol is nothing but an income redistribution scheme, which he is willing to use to achieve his own domestic policy goals, which is why cap and trade is so important to him and his supporters.  That is why the ClimateGate scandal was so critical in exposing the global warming evangelists as frauds.

It looks like now the Copenhagen conference will probably end with everyone getting their forum to do some America bashing, but probably not as much and in the past and then they will all fly home in their carbon producing private jets while actually doing nothing to improve the environment.  At the same time a real man made environmental disaster continues to take place every spring over the skies of Korea and no one says or does anything about it.