United Liberty

It looks like President Obama is backing away from job-killing environmental policies that would have come out of Copenhagen:

President Barack Obama and other world leaders agreed today that next month’s much-anticipated climate change summit will be merely a way station, not the once hoped-for end point, in the search for a worldwide global warming treaty.

The 192-nation climate conference beginning in three weeks in Copenhagen had originally been intended to produce a new global climate-change treaty. Hopes for that have dimmed lately. But comments by Obama and fellow leaders at a hastily arranged breakfast meeting here on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit served to put the final nail in any remaining expectations for the December summit.

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.

Some people were worried about Obama signing onto whatever came out of Copenhagen. It wouldn’t have been a good thing, but our Constitution requires a 2/3 majority (or 67 votes) in the Senate to approve of a treaty. Obama can’t even get his cap-and-trade bill moved in the Senate, and they only need 60 votes for cloture to bring it to a final vote, so this treaty was never a real threat.

None of this is to say that action by a regulatory body, such as the EPA, isn’t possible. That may well be a looming threat.