COP15: 'Nothing new' in Obama's speech
1335 CET A year ago, I sat in a news conference at the UN climate conference in Poznan and listened to Senator John Kerry pledge that an Obama administration would lead the world on combating climate change.
Today, Mr Obama himself appeared at the Copenhagen summit and told the world why "we have renewed our leadership within international climate negotiations".
Around the Bella Center, delegates huddled around TV monitors listening with rapt attention - some, doubtless, hoping that the president would bring a rabbit out of a hat, a conjuror sprinkling some magic dust to create a fairytale deal out of what is at the moment a bottomless morass of texts and tensions.
Reactions were mixed. "Nothing new" was the conclusion of Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International - "nothing we hadn't heard before".
Tony Juniper, the long-time UK environmental activist and Green Party candidate, noted the "great delivery" and the insights into the power struggles going on here; but concluded that Mr Obama has simply "laid down where the American position lies and challenged everyone else to move there".
Several segments of the speech appeared to back up that conclusion.
"America is going to continue on this course of action no matter what happens in Copenhagen." "America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say."
Just about every other party here, whether from the developed or developing world, would like the US to increase its offer - to cut emissions further, to put some public money firmly on the table, to develop the clean energy technologies that are key to a prosperous low-carbon future much faster than they are now and ensure that those technologies can get to the developing world.
After listening to Mr Kerry's speech a year ago, I suggested that the incoming president's priority might be to listen to other countries before deciding what global leadership looked like.
The impasse we are seeing here is perhaps because he, and the leaders of some other prosperous important nations, have not done so.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
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