As an issue, climate change – regardless of how people choose to define it – probably sits near the top of every major government’s to-do list. In a perfect world, that fact alone should be enough to spur into action the world leaders currently gathering in Copenhagen.

We do not, however, live in a perfect world. We live in a world where climate change, although a very important issue, is one of many facing policy makers with limited time, limited budgets and an expanding portfolio of pressing concerns. What can President Obama do to satisfy the world and express in action America’s commitment to addressing the probable effects of climate change? First and foremost he can look to his own country and its rich supply of innovation, creativity and domestic low-carbon resources.

The United States is home to many of the world’s leading alternative energy and carbon-neutral researchers, creative thinkers and entrepreneurs. Some are academics seeking to develop low-impact resources for idealistic reasons while others are traditional energy companies looking to capitalize on the green energy market. Both should be encouraged, because fundamentally shifting the very concepts of energy and energy supply will be an expensive and a long journey.

There is no “app” for clean energy, but there is a strategy and, given time, it will likely bear fruit: (1) continue to invest in energy efficiency technologies; (2) support and encourage alternative power generation sources such as nuclear, solar, wind, bio fuels and hydro; and (3) intelligently develop existing, domestic low-carbon resources such as abundant, clean natural gas.

The practical task of changing how electricity is generated and used will not be achieved through some panacea, but through the intelligent coordination of multiple, scalable solutions which will take time and significant resources to reach. Natural gas is a major part of the solution, but we need to be realistic about what it will take to get to that carbon-neutral future and what the real costs entail.

Can President Obama satisfy the world and Congress in Copenhagen? That depends on what you mean by satisfy. Satisfaction is a continuum, not an absolute. For example, the most satisfying coffee I have had was at a slightly elegant sidewalk café in Brussels after a brisk early morning walk in the clear cool air in the early spring of 2000. The coffee was deep, rich and just the right sweetness. Beside the coffee was a delicious cookie that melded just right with the espresso taste. All other coffees were measured against that subsequently and their relative satisfaction level was, well, lacking. Some people are satisfied with watered down Starbucks coffee with its slightly sickening caramels and "latte" tastes. Others, like the Arabs, want their mud thick coffee brewed with cardamom. (When I am in that part of the world I prefer the when-in-Amman-be-like-the-Jordanians coffee. It adds to the overall experience.) The Iranians want the coffee, milk and sugar all boiled together. Some Marines in the field could be satisfied with the reheated Dunkin Donuts brand coffee with a pile of sugar in it. As with all questions like this the answer is: it all depends on what you mean and what your goals are.

In Congress the democrats have heated the water, but the republicans and democrats are in an argument for what brand and type of coffee grounds to use. The results may end up being a slightly sour brew. lukewarm, waterered-down and somewhat unsatisfying to just about everyone.

We are in an unsatisfying gridlock on all sides and it seems to be in the battle to win the "zero sum political game" everyone is losing. There is no proper brew. If all sides worked together we might just have something approaching slightly satisfying for most, which seems to be one of the goals of democracy.

In Copenhagen, which might now be called for this meeting, "Nope-in-haggling", there is a deep divide between the haves and the have-nots, and between the big producers of greenhouse gases and those who do not produce so much. Frankly, the President will likely not satisfy Congress or those in the conference in Copenhagen in the way that many may hope he could. There are too many constraints on the processes here and there, and there are far too variant goals and objectives amongst the many parties.

What the President should see as his goals are the following: (1) He should make it clear that the United States is now fully engaged on climate-energy-environment issues at the highest levels and in full gear. (2) He should make it clear that this process is not expected to end when the delegates to the Copenhagen conference pack their bags and go home. (3) He should use his significant diplomatic and negotiation skills to help start the real process of discussions toward more productive treaties and agreements amongst nations and peoples that may take many years to find even partial completion. (4) He should present the problems we face in down-to-earth and realistic manners to the people of the United States. (5) He needs to engage the republicans and others on this. Those who doubt and those who sit on the fence on these issues are very important parts of the solution to the problems we face. They need to be listened to and brought fully into the process of decision making. Frankly, I have seen the debates and discussions in Washington on this issue to be more like a schoolyard street brawl than a discussion and debate amongst leaders. The President needs to take the high road on this and the opposition needs to join him in their own variety of the high road approach to present their side of the issues. Mud slinging and whisper campaigns harm us all. These issues are too important to relegate the educating of our public and the world to the low brow debates of the airwaves. (6) The American people and the world need to be better and more fully educated on these issues. They have the power of numbers. They are the true representatives of democracy, wherever it may be. They and their children and grandchildren will have the pay the price for our decision making today and into the future. We will likely not get the coffee just right for everyone, but there is great harm in not trying. Above all the President needs to present the Copenhagen conference as a beginning, not an end.

Now let's have the real negotiations begin. The hype for Copenhagen ruined it. Hopes were too high. Many expected the finest of results. What will likely be produced is reheated, bland and watered down brew without the cookie on the side.

When it comes to a treaty on global warming, it is highly unlikely that President can satisfy countries who insist that the United States – and the American people – must voluntarily bear economic hardship and sacrifice billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer aid before they will even agree to sit down to a bargaining table. And it would be irresponsible for the President and his taxpayer funded entourage to commit the United States into doing so when he arrives in Copenhagen on Friday.

Instead of jetting off to Europe to lobby for the Olympics, accept peace prizes and attempt to commit the United States into unilateral economic disarmament, the President should spend a little more time paying attention to the voices of everyday Americans. According to a recent Rassmussen poll, 71% of respondents say creating jobs is more important than stopping global warming. And in another Rasmussen survey released just today, nearly seven in ten Americans support responsible energy exploration off our shores.

The President should make good use of his time in Copenhagen by announcing his intention to drop his cap and trade plan and instead focus on responsible offshore energy development by immediately directing Interior Secretary Salazar to move towards a commonsense five year plan on energy development in the Outer Continental Shelf. He might not please some in Congress or the foreign dignitaries in Copenhagen, but he would be demonstrating his commitment to taking commonsense actions that the overwhelming majority of Americans demand: lower energy costs; royalty revenue to pay down the deficit; and, most importantly, putting an estimated nine million people in this country to work in high-paying, permanent jobs.

If we are serious about addressing climate change – whether in Copenhagen, on Capitol Hill or in the broader economy – we’re going to have to get practical and pragmatic quickly. Goals and targets are important; how to reach them is the real question.

Simply put, natural gas has to be a big part of the equation.

Natural gas can significantly reduce carbon emissions right now. We don’t need any technological leaps, and we don’t need to invest in costly infrastructure. Natural gas is 50% cleaner than coal when used in electric power generation, so if we switch to natural gas for power, we will have an immediate impact. Best of all, we have the capacity to do so right now: Today's clean and modern combined cycle gas generation plants run at about 40% of capacity. Increasing reliance on natural gas would allow for significant emissions reductions from existing infrastructure. Natural gas is also a perfect backup to renewable energy. It is dependable and reliable, and can be easily activated when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

Of course, deliberations on how to address climate change are taking place in the context of a struggling global economy. As former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth recently noted in Copenhagen, new supplies of domestic natural gas are “giving us a chance to develop a faster and smoother transition toward a low-carbon economy.” The industry supports 2.8 million American jobs already, and if we increase the amount of natural gas we use, that number will only grow.

In natural gas we have an abundant domestic resource that can reliably power our nation for generations to come—and do so in an economically and environmentally responsible manner. From power generation to large transportation fleets, Congress should find ways to incentivize the use of natural gas to put this homegrown energy source to greater use for America—creating jobs, reducing our carbon footprint and boosting our energy security—all with a clean, abundant energy source that is readily available right here in the United States.

The simple answer is no. Not only is it no, but a yes has been out of the question once it became clear earlier this year that a nearly crippled economy and high joblessness pretty much eliminated the chances in the Senate for a cap and trade bill. If the “world” wants the US to commit to deep and serious GHG emission controls, that is clearly not happening in Copenhagen as the President will have no easier time selling that to the country than the Democrats in the Senate were able to do. One can ask the legitimate question how anyone really ever expected Copenhagen to be otherwise – the problems with worldwide and deep GHG controls for China and India have always been present and have grown since Kyoto as their middle classes have grown and they develop an even greater hunger for that quality of life. As such, the exercise in Copenhagen for the President is more a matter of demonstrating the US’s re-engagement with world leaders on this subject, and the President’s willingness to work the bully-pulpit both here and abroad in support of making advances.

Making that bully-pulpit work was made a good bit harder in the agricultural arena last week in light of a little-noticed analysis by USDA made public earlier this month. The analysis looked in-depth at the EPA’s US-wide economic impacts of cap-and-trade legislation, focusing in on the U.S.grains and livestock farming sectors. USDA found in EPA’s analysis landowners shifting a significant number of crop and pasture acres into trees to capture greater returns from carbon offsets as the price of carbon goes up. These crop and pasture losses and the associated feed price increases drive a wrenching contraction in the pork, dairy and beef sectors by 2050. It also raised troubling questions about how we can simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also feed a world population expected to grow by 3 billion people by mid-century.

Under USDA’s analysis, most so-called agricultural offsets come from landowners converting cropland and pastureland to forest. USDA projects that 85 percent of offset revenues from 2015 to 2050 will come from such conversions and that by 2050 a total of 59 million acres of cropland and pasture will shift to trees. The shrinking crop and pasture land base forces production declines that cause crop prices to rise dramatically. By 2050 corn production is off 22 percent and beans are off 29 percent. Corn prices are 28 percent higher than the baseline, and beans are up 21 percent. As a result, hog slaughter is projected to be 23 percent below the baseline by 2050, with beef and milk production declines 10 percent and 17 percent, respectively. So, to meet our climate change commitments, the U.S. is asked to give up almost a quarter of its pork industry and 10 percent of its beef production. Higher livestock prices also significantly impact consumer food prices, with average annual price increases jumping by two–thirds, from an average of 3.1 percent to 5.2 percent.

It was shocking to hear USDA say that high livestock prices under cap-and-trade would likely be mitigated for consumers by increased imports of beef and pork. Not mentioned were the highly controversial implications of the United States moving toward becoming a net importer of basic foodstuffs even while it struggles to break free of dependence on foreign oil.

And how do these projections square with need to ramp up food production to feed a rapidly growing world? Other places in the world that do not have as robust a carbon offsets market to attract trees will increase their crop and pasture acres in response to higher feed and livestock prices. Significant habitat losses can be expected, but the mitigating effects of these acres on world crop and livestock supplies and prices will not alleviate the hardships resulting from the loss of US production. As a result, we can expect higher food costs worldwide. The efficiency of production of crops on these new acres will fall short of US standards, and the production of livestock from those feeds will also fall short of US rates. Habitat loss, higher food prices, and greater levels of hunger and hardship will result. That’s what these projections imply.

Unfortunately, independent work done by Iowa State’s Professor Dermot Hayes lends considerable credence to the EPA analysis that cap-and-trade will shift large amounts of agricultural land to trees. Hayes calculated the land rental rates implicit in the value of carbon projected by around the year 2023 under cap and trade relative to the carbon sequestration potential of trees. At EPA’s value of $30 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent, Hayes came up with Corn Belt crop land rental rates in the $100 to $130 per acre range –high enough to attract landowners to take approximately 25 percent of corn and soybean acres out of crop production and into trees.

The reaction in Washington to these forecasts -- and the effects on the livestock industry -- has been surprisingly muted. Perhaps that’s because it is hard for anyone to begin to fathom such a wrenching reduction in U.S. crops and pasture. But people forget that 40 percent or more of land is not owned by farmers and that landowners looking for steady and sound returns may easily shift their land out of crops. Others are inherently skeptical of projections 40 years into the future. But these tree and crop estimates are no more speculative than the 40-year projections EPA has relied upon to contend that the energy and general economic costs to the general consumer and economy from cap and trade are relatively small. More importantly, this supply of lower cost carbon offsets from this 59 million new acres of trees is part of the fundamental foundation in EPA’s analysis that helps drive down the estimated costs of H.R. 2454 -- all those low cost carbon offsets from trees are bought by utility companies’ needing to offset their emissions that by 2050 are supposed to be 80 percent or so below where they are today.If EPA’s forest carbon offsets and the directly related reductions in crop and pasture acreage are wrong, then EPA’s entire 40-year estimates of the costs of cap and trade may require fundamental reconsideration, too.

As President Obama leaves for Copenhagen, he not only must balance the demands of world leaders against those in Congress who worry his climate change plans are too far-reaching. He must also worry about how efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are going to affect the crop and livestock sectors, bedrock industries here at home, and food security and habitat protection worldwide. These are tall challenges indeed.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations at the end of this week, President Obama’s personal engagement in the talks demonstrates the administration’s deep commitment to addressing the climate challenge. It also highlights the critical role that Congress will play in crafting workable federal climate legislation, which will serve as the foundation for U.S. participation in any future international accord.

My hope is that Congress can complete work on climate legislation that leads to significant emissions reductions, while including strong consumer protection measures. Protecting electricity customers and other consumers from resulting energy cost increases is critical to maintaining public support for federal climate policy over the long haul and for successfully navigating the path to 60 votes in the Senate.

President Obama can indeed satisfy both the U.S. Congress and the delegations from the around the world that have gathered here in Copenhagen. I say this because the best goal for the Copenhagen climate talks is to make real progress on a sound foundation for meaningful, long-term global action, not some notion of immediate triumph.

It would be easy, but unfortunate, for countries to achieve what some people wish to define as “success” in Copenhagen: a signed international agreement, glowing press releases, and related photo opportunities for national leaders. Such an agreement could only be the Kyoto Protocol on steroids: more stringent targets for the industrialized countries and no meaningful commitments by the key rapidly-growing emerging economies of China, India, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, and South Africa (let alone by the numerous developing countries of the world).

Such an agreement could — in principle — be signed, but it would not reduce global emissions and it would not be ratified by the U.S. Senate (just like Kyoto). Hence, there would be no real progress on climate change.

If it’s not reasonable to expect that a comprehensive post-Kyoto policy architecture will be identified in Copenhagen, what would constitute real progress? One important step forward would be a constructive joint-communiqué from major countries (just seventeen industrialized and emerging economies account for about 90% of annual emissions).

Such a joint-communiqué could lay out key progressive principles to underlie a future climate agreement, such as making the United Nations notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities” meaningful through a the dual principles that: all countries recognize their historic emissions (read, the industrialized world); and all countries are responsible for their future emissions (think of those rapidly-growing emerging economies).

This would represent a great leap beyond what has become the “QWERTY keyboard” (that is, unproductive path dependence) of international climate policy: the distinction in the Kyoto Protocol between the small set of Annex I countries with quantitative targets, and the majority of countries in the world with no responsibilities. Various policy architectures could subsequently build on these dual principles and make them operational, beginning to bridge the massive political divide which exists between the industrialized and the developing world.

In addition, a mid-term agreement could be reached on an approach involving an international portfolio of domestic commitments, whereby each nation would commit and register to abide by its domestic climate commitments, whether those are in the form of laws and regulations or multi-year development plans. Support for such an approach has been voiced by a remarkably diverse set of countries, including Australia, India, and the United States.

The key question is not what this approach would accomplish in the short-term, but whether it would put the world in a better position two, five, and ten years from now in regard to a long-term path of action.

Consistent with this portfolio approach, President Obama recently announced that the United States would put a target on the table in Copenhagen to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 (in line with climate legislation in the U.S. Congress). In response, China announced that it would reduce its carbon intensity (emissions per unit of economic activity) 40 percent below 2005 levels over the same period of time. Subsequently, India announced similar targets. Given these countries rapid rates of economic growth, the announced targets won’t cut emissions in absolute terms, but they are promising starting points for negotiations.

So, it is fortunate that a few key nations, including the United States, appear to be more interested in real progress than symbolic action. And real progress in Copenhagen is consistent with the pace of domestic action in the U.S. Congress.

Although President Obama will arrive in Copenhagen this week with much hoopla and an endangerment finding for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, he has insinuated that he will not establish binding greenhouse pollutant targets until Congress takes action on a comprehensive climate bill. Indeed, the targets floated by the White House—a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020—are even weaker than the targets proposed by the already weak climate bills currently stalled in the Senate.

The president’s targets are completely scientifically inadequate. Recent climate science warns that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases must be reduced immediately to the equivalent of 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2—well below today’s current concentrations of nearly 390 ppm—if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. To have even a fifty-fifty chance of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2°C—a level at which millions of people would be displaced due to sea level rise, summer Arctic sea ice would likely disappear, and billions would suffer from water shortages — atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would have to peak at the equivalent of 450 ppm CO2. Even reaching this higher target would require developed countries to reduce their emissions to 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The far more modest reductions proposed by Congress and President Obama would leave the world on a path toward irreversible and cataclysmic climate change. Some have estimated global temperature increases of 7°C by the end of the century if we continue on with business as usual; the results under this scenario would be akin to a horrible science fiction movie (but the consequences mind-numbingly real).

The conventional wisdom holds that President Obama cannot offer more than Congress might one day deliver. Yet, President Obama need not be constrained by Congress’s failure to propose or adopt scientifically credible emissions reductions. Under the Constitution, applicable statutes, and prevailing case law, President Obama has the power to commit to scientifically sound and legally binding emissions reductions by executive agreement—without waiting for Congress to pass a climate bill. This is hardly a radical notion. As many mainstream legal scholars have pointed out in recent years, major trade and foreign relations commitments have been made by executive agreement for decades, if not centuries, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed the President’s authority to make such agreements on the nation’s behalf.

Nor would a new climate bill be needed to enforce such a commitment domestically. The United States already has a robust framework of existing laws and regulations—foremost among them the Clean Air Act—that can and should be used to control greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency is already moving some of the machinery necessary for regulation of greenhouse gases into place at both the federal and state level, though it can and should be doing more. Other federal statutes -- including the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act -- confer additional authority to address greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts.

In an ideal world, Congress would be supporting the president in seeking a strong, binding, international commitment to addressing the global climate change problem. But Congress shows no sign of taking leadership on this issue and the Senate, in fact, appears on a “beggar thy neighbor” course of the weakest common denominator feasible (all in the name of “gentlemanly compromise”). Put bluntly, chicken little Congress has produced little more than delay and obstruction for more than a decade, ever since the Senate adopted a resolution essentially killing any chance that the Kyoto Protocol would be ratified. Twelve years and countless millions of tons of carbon emissions later, Congress continues to postpone meaningful action. Despite Congress’s failures, the world needs strong action from the United States—action that the Obama Administration can and must take in Copenhagen. Yes he can take action. Yes he must. Will he?

In July 1997, the Senate passed SR-98 which advised not to accept a climate treaty that would harm the economy and not require specific and scheduled reductions by developing countries. The Clinton Administration ignored that advice and agreed to what turned out to be a fatally flawed Kyoto Protocol. Since then, the essence of SR-98 has been reaffirmed a number of times.

The delegates in Copenhagen appear to be traveling down the same road as Kyoto by advocating equally unrealistic targets of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 50% or more by 2050 along with billions of dollars in payments to developing countries to reduce their emissions. The President has indicated a more modest but still impractical goal for the US.

This truly is a case of Organized Hypocrisy where delegations know that the goals are unrealistic but use rhetoric of moral imperatives to say that they are realistic and must be done. The fact of the matter is that Copenhagen hypocrisy and a treaty that can be ratified by the Senate do not occupy any common space. Even if the President is successful in holding the US pledge to 17% below 2005 levels in 2020 and 50% in 2050, it is doubtful that there are 60 votes for such legislation mandating such reductions.

Deep cuts in emissions keep getting advocated without any explanation of how they will be achieved while simultaneously restoring robust economic growth and accommodating about 30 million more people. The first goal for 2020 involves 1 gigaton in CO2 reductions. Analyses have made clear that such reductions would require building over 100 nuclear plants, over 300 “clean coal” plants, or doubling the miles per gallon of every car on the road. That is simply not going to happen and the technology for producing no-carbon energy on the scale required by our economy is no where near ready or cost competitive.

Recent polls have made it abundantly clear that the priorities of the vast majority of Americans are economic growth and job creation. The rhetoric coming out of Copenhagen is totally inconsistent with those priorities. Come 2010 with the mid term elections rapidly approaching, Senators up for re-election would do well to recall the wisdom of the late Senator Everett Dirksen, “when I feel the heat, I see the light.” Advocating legislation that kills jobs, raises energy prices, and pledges billions of dollars(better known as bribes) to developing countries to board the emission reduction train is a good way to become an ex senator.