What is extraordinary about the president’s climate-change remarks at the U.N. is how little he actually said. He repeated the tired old platitudes about a planet in crisis, which are based on the same assumptions that this crisis was caused by industrialization and the developed world — and without mentioning the benefits of economic growth of which our emissions are simply a byproduct (while at the same time taking credit for the emissions drop-off caused by the U.S. recession, as Greg highlighted below). Beyond that he offered nothing new.
He patted his administration on the back for its clean-energy efforts (including the risible claim Chris noted here — that climate legislation will make such energy sources “profitable”), without acknowledging his failure to fully get his own party on board the Waxman-Markey express. He praised the fact that we will be ramping up spending on renewables, without mentioning that even if we increase their role in our energy mix by several hundred percent, it will have virtually no impact on global temperatures.
And, what was disheartening if not exactly surprising, he pointedly failed to mention the promise of nuclear energy as a technology that can generate large quantities of electricity with no carbon emissions (something wind and solar cannot do).
All in all, a pretty unimpressive performance.