Phil Radford's articles

As the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate gets under way, Greenpeace's new executive director looks at the challenges facing President Obama and the need to play hardball with Congress to ensure world-leading climate action.

When 16 heads of government descend on Washington today for President Obama’s Major Emitters Forum, he will hear the same demand from each of them: that the United States take big action, immediately, to slash climate pollution – or risking putting a real global solution to the climate crisis at risk.

Even though President Obama was elected on a platform of delivering action on global warming and has passionately reiterated those pledges since becoming president, he will have to overcome enormous skepticism from his international negotiating partners.

At this summit, it is they who will be repeating Ronald Reagan’s maxim about Soviet overtures at the beginning of the glasnost era: Trust, but verify.

The presidents and prime ministers have good reason to doubt: For all Obama’s talk (and President Clinton’s before him) about the urgency of the climate crisis, the United States has done little to nothing to address global warming pollution, even as almost every other developed country has at least started down the road to a climate-friendly economy.

Of course, there are some sprigs of hope: