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MARCO WERMAN: European officials are praising President Obama's new initiatives on climate change. The Obama Administration announced those initiatives yesterday. They include new steps to reduce heat-trapping emissions from cars and the naming of a special envoy for climate change. The Environment Minister for the Czech Republic, which holds the EU Presidency, said today that “Europe has gained a strong partner in the fight against global warming.” Indeed, Europe and the rest of the world have long looked to the US for leadership on the issue and have long been disappointed. The World's Environment Editor, Peter Thompson, has more.

PETER THOMPSON: The Obama Administration's one-two punch on climate policy this week signaled a decisive change in direction in Washington.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: The days of Washington dragging its heels are over. My administration will not deny facts; we will be guided by them.

THOMPSON: Without mentioning George W. Bush by name, President Obama clearly issued a strong rebuke to his predecessor. The new President made it clear he feels his Administration has a lot of ground to make up. Like Mr. Obama, President Bush came into office vowing to tackle climate change. On the campaign trail in 2000, candidate Bush promised to regulate greenhouse gasses. But barely months into office, the new President famously reversed course.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Circumstances have changed since the campaign, and that's why I decided to not have mandatory caps on CO2.

THOMPSON: President Bush also pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol --that's the major international agreement on cutting greenhouse gasses -- which the US had signed but never actually ratified. And the Bush Administration spent much of its eight years questioning the science on climate change -- even in the face of a growing scientific consensus that humans are affecting the atmosphere with likely severe consequences. Joseph Rome is a physicist and former official in the Clinton Energy Department, and now writes the blog “Climate Progress”. He says Bush's “dawdling,” as he puts it, had a severe cost.

JOSEPH ROME: The challenge is much greater because we've built another decade of polluting infrastructure and emissions have increased tremendously. And we've given China a free pass to do the same, and their emissions have exploded.

THOMPSON: But Rome says the Bush Administration also failed on the climate issue on an even more fundamental level.

ROME: Not just the failure to act, but the failure to explain to the American public what we face.

THOMPSON: And that, Rome says, contributed to a political environment that's left the country as a whole still unprepared to make necessary changes. Now, responsibility for this less than urgent sentiment among Americans on climate change can't be laid entirely at the feet of George W. Bush. Climate change first burst onto the national agenda more than 20 years ago, but then President George H.W. Bush avoided strong action. So did the administration of Bill Clinton, even with climate change crusader Al Gore in the White House. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate researcher and a regular contributor to the “Real Climate” blog, says this lack of urgency up to now reflects the nature of the problem.

GAVIN SCHMIDT: So you've got these acute problems and these chronic problems, and climate change is very much a chronic problem – something that, you know, you can convince yourself day by day, “I don't have to deal with this today,” but you know, the days add up and sooner or later you're going to come up against a wall that says, “Oh, boy. You know what? You should have been dealing with this years ago.”

THOMPSON: And is that what we've been doing?

SCHMIDT: Pretty much, yeah.

THOMPSON: The new Administration says its moves this week are meant to signal that this President understands the reality and urgency of the problem and the need to link domestic action with international engagement. Here's the new State Department climate envoy, Todd Stearn.

TODD STEARN: As the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gasses, we can only expect to lead abroad if we are prepared to act decisively at home. Yet, we can only meet the climate challenge with a response that is genuinely global. 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are produced outside the United States, and a rapidly growing percentage is produced in emerging market countries.

THOMPSON: Of course, whether this new push by the White House will translate into real progress to cut greenhouse gasses remains to be seen. President Obama will have to use a lot of political capital to get Congress to pass strong climate legislation, and the global recession will add a whole new challenge to this year's negotiations on a new international climate treaty. So the Administration's next steps will say as much about where it's headed as this week's first steps. Joanna Lewis, a professor of Science, Technology, and International Affairs at Georgetown University, says a good next step would be direct engagement with a country that's now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, China.

JOANNA LEWIS: And this could come in the form of calling a Presidential summit with China, in which climate change would be one of the top issues on that agenda.

THOMPSON: Professor Lewis says no matter how committed the US may now be, without China, there's still no solution to our climate change problems. For The World, I'm Peter Thompson.

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