WH Still Hopeful on Climate Change

Even before President Obama arrived in Italy for the G-8, White House officials were downplaying expectations that there would be major movement on climate change policy here. And that’s still the message, a day after the talks produced an agreement to limit levels of greenhouse gases in the long term but failed to produce numerical benchmarks in the short term for how exactly to achieve that goal. Amid the disarray, developing nations, led by China and India, failed to sign onto the accord—putting at risk talks set for later this year in Copenhagen when the United Nations hopes to cement a worldwide climate treaty. Asked this morning about the failure to get an accord, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs repeated a line of argument he used earlier this week: that the administration is more concerned with getting something through Congress before turning to the world stage. “I'm not entirely sure that we expected to come here and have eight to 10 years of disagreement wash away in a couple of days in July in Italy,” Gibbs said. “Everybody understands that this is going to take some time… and I think you probably heard him on the campaign trail say--that it is hard for us to go to certain countries in the world and ask them to do something that we don't appear to be likely to do.” Gibbs said it was important to Obama to show “we have some skin in the game.” Still White House officials framed yesterday’s developments as “progress” and were hopeful that more announcements could come today as Obama chairs a broader forum of major economies, expanding the number of participating countries from 8 to 17, where climate is expected to be a leading issue.