It's summer, and a searing drought is shriveling corn fields in the Midwest. Meanwhile torrential rains (the worst in 60 years) have killed several dozen people in Beijing. Sea ice continues to shrink in the arctic -- the decline in June was the largest in the satellite record -- creating new sea areas for the Coast Guard to patrol. Welcome to climate change 2012.

But how serious is the problem? How worried should you be? I don't know, because I'm neither an atmospheric physicist, environmental economist, nor specialist in global institutions designed to address collective goods (or negative externalities). Nonetheless, I do try to stay informed on this issue, and I occasionally use the case of climate change to illustrate certain features of international politics to my students. And what makes it frustrating for a layperson like me is the range of opinion one can find even among well-informed journalists.

Case in point: two prominent articles on this topic appeared this past week, reaching sharply contrasting conclusions. The first article, by science writer/environmental journalist Bill McKibben, presents a deeply worrisome picture of the planet's future. According to McKibben, it's all in the math. There is now a strong scientific consensus that human beings can only put another 565 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere without causing average atmospheric temperature to rise more than two degrees Celsius. (Two degrees was the agreed-upon target figure at the 2009 climate change summit in Copenhagen, though many climate scientists think even that level of increase would be very harmful.)

Unfortunately, a recent inventory of current oil and gas reserves showed that they contain enough carbon to release roughly 2,795 gigatons of CO2, if it is all brought to the surface and burned. That's about five times the upper limit identified above. The problem, of course, is that the companies that own these reserves will want to pump the oil and gas out and sell it -- that's the business they're in -- even though spewing that much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would be disastrous. In the absence of effective government action to discourage consumption (i.e., by taxing carbon to raise the price and diminish consumption) we're in deep trouble.

The second article, from yesterday's New York Times, offers a cheerier view. In the words of business reporter David Leonhardt, "behind the scenes. . .a somewhat different story is starting to emerge -- one that offers reason for optimism to anyone worried about the planet." He describes how investments in clean energy are reducing the price of solar and wind power and how shifts from coal to natural gas (which is less carbon-intensive) for electricity generation have accelerated. And he dangles that hope that government-sponsored R and D will eventually create "disruptive technologies" that "can power the economy without heating the planet."

To be sure, these two articles aren't totally at odds. Leonhardt acknowledges that we have a long way to go, and that many experts believe that you need a combination of regulation to raise the price of carbon along with further reductions in the cost of alternative energy sources. Similarly, McKibben's account accepts that there is probably still time for effective political action to address this situation (Indeed, his whole article is clearly intended as a clarion call for greater activism).

As is so often the case, the issue boils down to politics. And that's why I'm pessimistic, because I can't think of any issue where the barriers to effective political action are so great. First of all, you have an array of special interests with little or no interest in allowing the government to interfere with their ability to make money in the short-term (see under: Koch Brothers). Second, you have a political system in the United States (the world's second largest greenhouse gas producer) that is unusually open to lobbying and other forms of political interference. Third, climate change is a classic example of an intergenerational equity problem: it's hard to get people to make sacrifices today (i.e., in the form of higher energy prices, less comfortable houses and offices, more expensive travel, etc.) for the sake of people who haven't even been conceived yet. That same principle applies to politicians too: Why should they jeopardize their re-election prospects for the sake of voters who won't be around until they are long gone? Fourth, there's also a thorny equity issue between advanced industrial countries like the United States (whose economies were developed before anyone knew about climate change) and emerging economies like China or India that don't want to slow their economic growth by reducing greenhouse gas emissions today. Even if there is a rapidly growing consensus on the need to do something soon, everybody wants somebody else pay most of the price or bear most of the burdens.

For all these reasons, the well-publicized effort to devise an effective global solution to the problem of human-induced climate change has largely failed thus far. It's possible that some new disruptive technology will swoop in and solve the problem for us, or maybe some of the intriguing proposals for "geo-engineering" the planet may prove workable and effective.

Maybe, but such hopes remind me of this old cartoon. If we're going to need a miracle (whether political or technological) we're going to have to be more explicit about what happens in step two.

The scope of devastation from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan is heart-rending, and readers who are in a position to help should donate generously to the charity of their choice. (See here for a list of worthy options).

The immediate consequences of the disaster are real enough, but today's New York Times also identifies what could be an even more significant long-term effect of this event: the curtailing of plans to address global warming through sharply increased reliance on nuclear power.

The basic equation here is pretty simple. The only way to deal with climate change is by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which in turns means reducing reliance on the burning of fossil fuels. Conservation, improved efficiency, and "green" energy sources like wind farms can help, but not enough to fill the gap without a significant curtailing of living standards. Accordingly, many recent proposals to address future energy needs have assumed that many countries -- including the United States -- would rely more heavily on nuclear power for electricity generation. It's not a complete answer to the climate change problem by any means, but addressing it in a timely fashion would be more difficult if nuclear expansion is eliminated.

The destruction of the Fukushima nuclear plant is bound to set back these efforts, and it may derail them completely. At a minimum, it will make it much harder to get approval for new power plants -- which already face classic NIMBY objections -- which will drive up the cost and make a significant expansion of the nuclear industry politically infeasible in many countries, especially the United States.

This reaction doesn't make a lot of sense because the costs and risks of nuclear energy need to be rigorously compared against the costs and risks of other energy sources and the long-term costs and risks of global warming itself. But that's not the way that the human mind and the democratic process often work. We tend to worry more about rare but vivid events -- like an accident at a nuclear plant -- and we downplay even greater risks that seem like they are part of the normal course of daily life. Thus, people worry more about terrorist attacks than they do about highway accidents or falling in a bathtub, even though they are far more likely to be hurt by the latter than the former.

So, in addition to the thousands of lives lost, the billions of dollars of property damage, and the knock-on economic consequences of the Japanese disaster, we need to add the likely prospect of more damage from climate change down the road. It's possible that clearer heads will prevail and guide either more stringent conservation measures or the sensible expansion of nuclear power (along with other energy alternatives), but I wouldn't bet on it.

What happened in Copenhagen? The answer is: not much. Facing a very real possibility of complete failure -- a two-year buildup to a cacophonous conference that ended in de facto deadlock -- a select group of major powers cobbled together a non-binding “agreement” to undertake various purely voluntary actions, aimed at an arbitrary target for limiting future atmospheric warming. As Greenpeace noted on its Twitter page: “2 years planning, 2 weeks negotiating = worse than half-assed deal in the last 2 hours. Climate change you can believe in.” And I assume you didn’t missed the symbolism of Obama leaving the conference a day early so he could get back to Washington before it snowed.

Environmental issues aren’t my main thing, you understand, but I can’t resist the urge to offer a few comments.  

First, you shouldn’t be surprised by this outcome, especially if you’ve been reading this blog.  As the Economist  noted a week or so ago, “Climate change is the hardest political problem the world has ever had to deal with.” In addition to the scientific uncertainties (not about the fact of climate change, but about the impact of different policy responses), dealing with man-made climate change is a classic collective action problem. All countries would like to avoid the consequences of atmospheric warming, but they would also like someone else to pay the costs of addressing it. Furthermore, the worst negative consequences won’t be evenly distributed and won’t occur for several decades, which means that today’s leaders would have to impose costs on their citizens now in order to leave future generations better off. That’s do-able, but hardly a tempting prospect for most politicians. In addition, there is still no consensus on the best way to proceed: some states favor “cap and trade” systems while other prefer a straightforward “carbon tax.” Finally, the main polluters are in very different economic circumstances; the developed world created the problem but now wants to get rising powers like China and India to undertake potentially costly measures that could slow their own growth. Needless to say, that's not very attractive to Beijing or New Delhi. Toss in the reality that any agreement would be unwieldy, expensive, and rife with verification problems, and you have an issue that makes reforming health care here in the United States look absurdly simple by comparison.

Second, the outcome in Copenhagen does lend support for FP chief Moises Naim’s concept of “minilateralism.”  If you can’t get 192 states to agree on a global agreement (and it sure looks like you can’t), then focus on getting the biggest economies (who are the biggest source of the problem and the states with the resources to help the others), and see if you can get some sort of agreement among them. Thus, an optimist could see the face-saving “deal” that emerged at the very end of the conference as the building block for a new initiative that would eschew a grand global bargain in favor of a more focused deal among the major powers.

Third, this episode offers another revealing glimpse at Obama’s diplomatic style; indeed, his entire approach to politics. A master of soaring rhetorical style, he sets ambitious goals and imposes short deadlines (remember when he said he wanted to get a two-state solution in his first term?). When those lofty goals (inevitably) turn out to be unreachable, he grabs what’s available (a flawed health care deal, more photo-op "diplomacy" in the Middle East, a compromise “surge” in Afghanistan, etc.), and talks about the need to keep “moving forward.”

The “glass half full” interpretation is that this approach avoids complete deadlock and helps Obama avoid the appearance (and maybe the reality) of complete and obvious failure.  And in some cases—most notably health care—you end up with a reform that is better than having done nothing, even if it is far less than the American people deserve. Given the complexity of some issues -- such as climate change -- and the barriers to bold action that are central to America’s checks-and-balances, multiple veto-point system of government, this may be the best he/we can do.

But there’s a “half-empty” version of this story too. By setting too many lofty goals, and showing a too-ready willingness to cut  deals in order to save face, Obama is teaching his opponents that he’s never going to walk away and that they can always get a better deal if they stonewall him and drag things out as long as they can. That’s a problem no matter who is doing it: the GOP, China, the Karzai government, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Iran. What makes it worse is Obama’s penchant for thrusting himself into the middle of negotiations at the wrong time, as he did over the City of Chicago’s Olympics bid and as he appears to have done in Copenhagen as well.  (If climate change is really that important he should have been there longer; if it was clear that no deal was going to happen, maybe he shouldn’t have gone at all).

But what really worries me is that Obama is in fact making the best of a set of bad options, and that it still won’t be nearly good enough.

If I were President Obama (now there's a scary thought!), I'd ask some smart people on my foreign policy team to start thinking hard about "Plan B." What's Plan B? It's the strategy that he's going to need when it becomes clear that his initial foreign policy initiatives didn't work. Obama's election and speechifying has done a lot to repair America's image around the world -- at least in the short term -- in part because that image had nowhere to go but up. But as just about everyone commented when he got the Nobel Peace Prize last week, his foreign policy record to date is long on promises but short on tangible achievements. Indeed, odds are that the first term will end without his achieving any of his major foreign policy goals.

To be more specific, I'd bet that all of the following statements are true in 2012.

1. There won't be a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel will still be occupying the West Bank and controlling the Gaza Strip. More and more people are going to conclude that "two states for two peoples" is no longer possible, and that great Cairo speech will increasingly look like hollow rhetoric.

2. The United States will still have tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. Victory will not be within sight.

3. Substantial U.S. personnel will remain in Iraq (relabeled as "training missions"), and the political situation will remain fragile at best. 

4. The clerical regime in Iran will still be in power, will still be enriching nuclear material, will still insist on its right to control the full nuclear fuel cycle, and will still be deeply suspicious of the United States. Iran won't have an actual nuclear weapon by then, but it will be closer to being able to make one if it wishes.

5. There won't be a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

6. Little progress will have been made toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. The United States and Russia may complete a new strategic arms agreement by then, but both states will still have thousands of nuclear warheads in their stockpiles. None of the nine current nuclear weapons states will have disarmed, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is still unratified three years from now.

Other achievements that we won't see include the balancing of the federal budget, a major revamping of global financial architecture, reform of the U.N. Security Council, a significant increase in the size of the State Department or the foreign aid budget, or the completion of new trade round. I'm not even sure we will have closed Gitmo or ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" by then.

Assuming he wins re-election, therefore, President Obama is going to be looking at a foreign policy "to do" list with remarkably few boxes checked off. And somebody ought to start thinking about this possibility now, because wise statecraft ought to anticipate the circumstances one is going to face a few years hence, instead of focusing solely on what's in the in-box today.

So what's Plan B? I'm still wrestling with that issue myself, but here's a quick sketch of some of the fundamental ideas. Plan B begins by recognizing that the United States remains the most secure great power in modern history and that most of damage we have suffered recently has come from scaring ourselves into foolish foreign adventures. It means rejecting the belief -- common to both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists -- that virtually every global problem requires an American solution and "American leadership." It acknowledges that social engineering in complex traditional societies is something we don't know how to do and probably can't learn, but it takes comfort from the fact that it is also a task that we don't have to do. It accepts that there are a few bad guys out there that do need to be confronted, captured, and sometimes killed, but understands that the more force we use and the heavier our footprint is, the more resistance we will ultimately face. And yes, Plan B understands that sometimes bad things will happen to Americans, and there is nothing we can do to completely eliminate all foreign dangers. Get used to it.

Plan B means playing "hard to get" more often, so that other states don't take us for granted and so that they bear a greater share of common burdens. It means exploiting balances of power and playing divide-and-conquer, instead of trying to impose a preponderance of U.S. power on every corner of the globe. It prizes the individual freedoms that are the core of American democracy -- freedoms that are threatened by a steady diet of foreign wars -- and it recognizes that other societies will have to find their own way toward more pluralist and participatory forms of government, and at their own pace. It seeks to maintain armed forces that are second to none but eschews squandering lives or money on peripheral wars that are neither vital nor winnable. It rejects "special relationships" with any other state, if by that one means relationships where we support other states even when they do foolish things that are not in our interest (or theirs). 

And Plan B proceeds from the belief that other states will be more likely to follow America's lead if they look at us and like what they see. America used to dazzle the world by offering up a vision of opportunity, equality, energy and competence that was unimaginable elsewhere. The danger now is that America is increasingly seen as a land of crumbling infrastructure, mountainous debt, uninsured millions, fraying public institutions, and xenophobic media buffoons. Over the longer term, getting our house in order back home will to a lot more to shore up our global position than conducting endless foot patrols through the Afghan countryside.

Postscript: Some smart observers -- such as Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic -- have a more favorable view of Obama's performance to date. They discern a trademark style in Obama's cautious and reflective approach to most policy issues: he sets forth general goals, waits to see how others react, gauges the limits of the possible, and then decides on a course of action. There's probably something to this view, and surely the patient examination of alternative policy options makes more sense than relying on one's "gut instincts" and then stubbornly refusing to admit the possibility of error.

Whether one relies on calm deliberation or a president's entrails, however, the proof of any approach to policymaking is its ability to deliver tangible results. And here the jury is still out. My concern is that Obama has yet to use American power -- in either its hard and soft forms -- in ways designed to shape the calculations and actions of both allies and adversaries. Where Bush erroneously believed that the United States could simply dictate to the rest of the world, thus far Obama seems unwilling to wield American power against stubborn opponents or withhold U.S. support from recalcitrant allies. His speeches are a valuable tool, but ultimately others need to know that there is resolve and purpose and tangible actions behind them. Sometimes foreign policy is like community organizing -- i.e., you're trying to herd diverse groups to work together for a common goal and your task is to overcome suspicions so that the common ground can be seized. But at other times it's more like a gang war. And when it's the latter, you have to take names, draw lines, and use the power at one's disposal to get the outcomes you want.

Think about it this way: how many foreign leaders are now grateful because the United States has backed them and their prospects are improving, and how many governments are now worried because the United States is successfully using its power to undermine or thwart them and force them to rethink their positions?

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