Obama beats clock to help craft deal
Constrained by partisan politics at home, he was determined to return home with a victory
Washington: It was almost unthinkable. The president of the United States walked into a meeting of fellow world leaders and there wasn't a chair for him, a sure sign he was not expected, maybe not even wanted.
Barack Obama didn't pause, however. "I'm going to sit by my friend Lula," he said, moving toward Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
A Brazilian aide gave the US president his chair, and Obama spent the next 80 minutes helping craft new requirements for disclosing efforts to fight global warming.
Along with India, South Africa and Brazil, the key member in the room was China, which recently surpassed the US as the world's top emitter of heat-trapping gasses.
At the table this time for China was Premier Wen Jiabao, not an underling as before. Obama was bent on striking a deal before flying home to snowbound Washington.
He would later hail the achievement as a breakthrough. But even Obama said there was much more to do, and climate authorities called Copenhagen's results a modest step in the global bid to curb greenhouse gasses that threaten to melt glaciers and flood coastlines.
Obama's 15-hour, seat-of-the-pants dash through Copenhagen was marked by doggedness, confusion and semi-comedy.
Constrained by partisan politics at home, and quarrels between rich and poor nations abroad, he was determined to come home with a victory, no matter how imperfect.
Experts and activists may debate its significance for years. Some, like Jeremy Symons, who watched the talks for the National Wildlife Federation, said it was "high drama and true grit on the part of the president that delivered the deal."
Others were far less kind. The Copenhagen agreements are "merely the repackaging of old and toothless promises," said Asher Miller, executive director of the Post Carbon Institute.
Even though a weary, bleary-eyed Obama had added six hours to his planned nine-hour visit, he was back in Washington by the time delegates at the 193-nation summit approved the US-brokered compromises.
