Obama ‘optimistic’ US can lead on climate – but won’t lead!

Just.Another.Politician.™ reached yet another level of bullshitting yesterday, with his claim he thought America was ready to take over the lead from Europe on climate change issues.

This comes after his own climate negotiator, earlier in the week (as I blogged), said the U.S. might not even have climate change legislation ready for December’s Copenhagen summit, and the administration that won’t commit the U.S. to get seriously below 1990 CO2 limits at anytime in the foreseeable future because it wants 2005, not 1990, to be used as the benchmark year for measuring CO2 reductions. (Of course, that’s not all Team Obama’s fault; that baseline is part and parcel of the Waxman-Markey bill, which looks crappier all the time.)

This is also the Obama Administration whose EPA says CO2 can be regulated as a pollutant, then punts further leadership on the issue to Congress.

President Obama told German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a straight face:

“Ultimately the world is going to need targets that it can meet. It can't be general, vague approaches.”

Yep, that’s some leadership. Practice what you preach.