Better than any of his predecessors, and a relatively strong international voice, Barack Obama has not been close to equal to the challenge of climate change. His years in power were to a significant extent squandered at precisely that point in history when robust action is most urgent, might still make a difference. His failed politics of conciliation and consensus, felt acutely across the full range of issues during his presidency, was especially misguided as temperatures, droughts and storms set new records. The missed opportunity to combine efforts with social movements, the only chance he had to even partially overcome rabid right wing resistance, will haunt the country for years to come.
The unwillingness and inability to ally with climate justice and other movements (think women's movement battles over abortion and contraception, immigration, Occupy, efforts for criminal justice reform, Black Lives Matter, peace groups' struggle against the War on Terror, and all the rest) is the great tragedy of the Obama era. To view the tragedy as unavoidable, to see Obama as simply a prettified spokesperson for the 1% -- and there is much to support this perspective -- ignores reasonable inquiries into missed opportunities, and surrenders demands for a better president next time. His remaining defenders still claim he did the best he could with a gerrymandered Congress and an ascendant Tea Party. This overlooks the arrogance, the timidity, self-satisfaction, and lack of conviction of the administration. Team Obama's hubris and lack of courage led to countless offers to split differences with reactionaries out for blood. The failure to mobilize with people at home prevents the president from mobilizing with the world's people for Paris.
Obama is hazily cognizant of the power of the people to move policymakers.
[T]hat's why I continually go back to the notion that the American people have to feel the same urgency that I do. And it's understandable that they don't, because the science right now feels abstract to people. It will feel less abstract with each successive year.
He remains wed, however, to the outdated and partial view that the effects of climate change remain remote for most people. The science felt less abstract each of his eight years in office. Even if he's right about this, what has the president done to help people feel the same urgency? Precious little. How vigorously has he done battle with Fox News and the rest of the denier industrial complex?
Obama passes off his petroleum-supply politics as usual as savvy even-handedness and realism rather than incoherence and conflict avoidance. Seeing climate change as just another issue to manage, albeit against a racing clock, contradicts his understanding of the ever more urgent science. The president betrays a fateful misconception of the politics and essence of growing climate instability. Climate change cannot be compartmentalized from other political problems and possible solutions because of its scale and stakes. These are not normal politics.
The challenge of climate change is anything but easy. It touches everything, ever more urgently. In this light, President Obama's efforts have fallen far short of what Americans and the rest of the world needs now. One final example: cuts to the Pentagon budget would help reduce US carbon emissions, save money for climate programs, and shrink the flow of refugees. We get instead growing military spending and an endless War on Terror. The eco-socialists are probably right: capitalism is incapable of sufficient greening to forestall catastrophe. The current system requires replacement not by Bernie Sanders' anemic version of democratic socialism but by a participatory, just, ecological system prioritizing people and planet over profits. You'd think presidents who identify as "progressive" might fight harder to prove the eco-socialists wrong.
Steve Breyman, a former New York State Office of Climate Change staffer, is an advisor to Jill Stein, and on the Steering Committee of 100% Renewables Now NY. Reach him at breyms|AT|rpi.eduEmail address
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