Spiegel reams Obama on climate change

The popular German magazine says U.S. President Barack Obama lied in Berlin a year ago, has sold out to the lobbyists he said he would fight, and has forfeited his claim to be a world citizen.

The magazine then faults average Americans’ notable insularity:

For most Americans, the world beyond the US's borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance.

That’s part of also deploring Obama’s likely no-show in Copenhagen next month.

As a parting shot, Speigel goes quasi-apocalyptic:

But if the worst-case scenario becomes reality at Copenhagen and at the follow-up conferences -- if, in other words, world leaders ignore the findings of the global scientific community -- then the US will find itself in a very uncomfortable position. America will be seen as the primary culprit of global warming -- and this after the US, with its rampant real estate speculation, has given us a global economic crisis that has not only destroyed assets, but pushed 100 million people worldwide into hunger. With that kind of track record, the US hardly has a claim any more to the leadership of the Western world — let alone a Nobel Peace Prize for its leader.

Wow.