ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
There were hopes that President Obama would signal big changes today in the way the U.S. deals with climate change. That's what many leaders from other developed nations were hoping for. Joining us now to talk about international reaction to Mr. Obama's speech is NPR's Richard Harris. Hi, Richard.
RICHARD HARRIS: Hello, Robert.
SIEGEL: You listened to the speeches that followed the president's. What sense did you get from those speeches of how the president was received?
HARRIS: Well, Mr. Obama is very popular and he got a nice, warm round of applause when he was done. I think he scored points for fully acknowledging that global warming is a huge and serious issue. But there was a lot of frustration that he didn't say more, that he didn't put something new on the table in a big way from the United States. I listened to France's President Nicolas Sarkozy who gave one of the speeches later on and he even sounded angry. In his speech he even referred to empty speeches. He didn't mention Mr. Obama per se but his frustration level at the pace of climate talks was clearly just through the roof.
SIEGEL: Well, what would the Europeans actually have wanted President Obama to say?
HARRIS: So Mr. Obama's strategy is try to get domestic climate legislation through the Senate first to find out what the Senate is willing to stand behind and then bring them climate legislation. So the timing is very unfortunate in terms of the global climate talks, but he doesn't want to end up where we were after Kyoto in 1997.
SIEGEL: And what's been heard from China, which actually produces even more emissions than the U.S. does?
HARRIS: But President Hu Jintao did not make any promises really regarding an international deal. And so it doesn't seem like what he said would really break the logjam that we're seeing in the current climate talks.
SIEGEL: Any other interesting speakers from other parts of the world?
HARRIS: And the other impassioned speech came from the leader of Rwanda who basically reminded everyone that the poorest countries in the world really suffer the most, even though they are least responsible for global warming. And he was advocating a very substantial transfer of wealth essentially from the rich countries to the poor countries as a way to help the poor countries take care of the problems that the rich countries have created.
SIEGEL: Richard, this is all in preparation for the climate talks in December in Copenhagen, and does today at the U.N. give you any indication of what's likely to happen there in December?
HARRIS: Well, I think that it's pretty clear that there's not going to be an enormous breakthrough that will make Copenhagen a resounding success in the terms that people are all hoping for. I mean, the countries of the world are in agreement that there should be a climate treaty, that we need to do something about global warming. The issue is that they're on an extremely tight deadline to make things happen in Copenhagen. It doesn't seem as though they're going to make an enormous amount of progress between now and December.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Richard.
HARRIS: My pleasure.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Richard Harris at the United Nations. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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