Richard Graves's articles

The United Nations climate process is an obsession with a subset of the environmental community, the only route by which global warming can be tackled on the scale it requires. It can be vague and confoundingly policy heavy, with jargon and acronym-laden language impenetrable to outsiders.

That process is now coming to a defining moment. With the Obama administration moving rapidly to turn the old Bush climate policy on its head, it would appear that the stars are aligning for a global climate treaty to be crafted with the United States on board, an accomplishment that escaped the Kyoto Protocol.

However, the road to Copenhagen goes through the American Midwest, and it appears to get rocky.

Senators from Midwestern manufacturing and coal-using states have pushed back on the idea of an international climate treaty. As dirty industry leans on senators whose states are facing rising unemployment and shuttered factories, the debate of climate vs. economy is still alive and well, despite the appointment of Van Jones as a White House adviser on green jobs and reports like McKinsey's outlining how stabilizing emissions has a close to net zero cost.

The only way for the Obama administration to pull together the votes to bring the United States on board for Copenhagen may be by tying it to a successful push for clean energy in the Midwest, and that hinges largely on the work of young people, labor groups, and innovative clean energy projects in the region.