Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
[W]e ask [the United States] for your leadership. But if for some reason you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.
Kevin Conrad, Representative of Papua New Guinea (2007)I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
President Barack Obama (2013)The first quote above marked a nadir of US diplomatic “leadership” on any issue in several decades. In fact, the delegate’s plea to the USA either to lead or step aside so others could lead at the FCCC Conference of the Parties was followed by applause and cheers by hundreds of delegates for his having made the point so publicly in an official venue and in the presence of the leaders of the US delegation. The event provides an apt transition from the previous chapter’s focus on international cooperation to this chapter’s focus on leadership, both internationally and domestically, and options for the future.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.