44, Day 68: Ambitious Climate Initiative

An ongoing log of the daily activities of the 44th president of the United States during his first 100 days:

-President Obama spent the day in Camp David, but it wasn't much of a day off. His administration used the day to introduce sweeping global climate-change talks that will for the first time include representatives from China and India, two major contributors of greenhouse gases. The European Union and 14 other countries also will participate. The first set of meetings will take place next month in Washington, and a second round is scheduled for La Maddalena, Italy, in July. You'd be hard pressed to find the announcement on the difficult-to-navigate White House website, but the text was reprinted here.

Former President George Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, an earlier international climate-change agreement, because it didn't include big developing economies that are already major polluters. Including them in the preliminary talks Obama announced today is seen as a way to produce a more palatable new global treaty when the world's nations gather again in December in Copenhagen. Even then, the U.S. is unlikely to agree to cut emissions by as much as some other countries want, because cuts of 25 to 40 percent of 1990 levels over the next decade is politically unsupportable in Congress. "Let me speak frankly here: It is in no one's interest to repeat the experience of Kyoto by delivering an agreement that won't gain sufficient support at home," Todd Stern, President Obama's chief climate-change negotiator, said.

-The president used his weekly radio address to express support for people affected by flooding along the Red River in North Dakota and Minnesota. He praised the army of volunteers who have filled and lain sandbags along the swollen river to protect homes and business in Fargo and other threatened communities. He had already declared the area a disaster area and authorized federal help for the region.

by Mark Stein

Sources: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times.