When climate change meeting in Copenhagen flops, blame Barack Obama's China trip

The upcoming climate change meeting in Copenhagen will likely achieve nothing and President Barack Obama's trip to China is to blame, Steve Clemons writes in a Politico Ideas piece.

Clemons says Obama suffers from trying to tackle too many issues, and thus not addressing any of them well enough to make a difference.

Clemons writes that Obama's failure to get Chinese supports for serious, binding targets to reduce greenhouse gases and to convince China to prioritize consumption over production leaves America looking weak on the global stage.

Obama needs to accomplish something to make other nations see him as a leader they should follow, Clemons says. "Obama has pulled off nothing big yet," he writes, "and until he shows an ability to change the way gravitational forces have pulled global affairs out of equilibrium, then the world will resist America’s most benign entreaties to collectively solve problems that face all of us — particularly climate change."