OK, so President Barack Obama's lightning jaunt to Copenhagen last week was less than successful. Even with Oprah along, the Cheerleader-in-Chief couldn't clinch the deal for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics. It happens.

But now that he knows the way to Denmark, might the American president consider arguing the U.S. case at international climate meetings in Copenhagen in December? The White House said he might, if other heads of state showed up.

"Right now you've got a meeting that's set up for a level not at the head of state level," presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One last week. "If it got switched, we would certainly look at coming."

Those climate talks might need a bit of a boost from the United States. White House climate czarina Carol Browner has said it's unlikely Obama will be able to sign any U.S. legislation to curb climate change before the December meeting. And that sets up a familiar Catch-22: if there's no U.S. law in place before Copenhagen climate talks, can the United States commit to anything? And if there IS a U.S. law in place, does the United States have the flexibility to maneuver in these international negotiations?

Climate negotiators already know the answer to the first part of that conundrum; they agreed to the Kyoto Protocol without backing from the U.S. Congress and came home to find no support for this 1997 carbon-capping deal. The United States is still the only industrialized nation not to ratify it.

After the Olympic disappointment -- Chicago was the first city of the final four to be cut from the running; Rio won -- is Obama's presence something that U.S. climate negotiators actually want? The global environmental community cheered his election last year after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, but he may not be the rock star on climate that he was then.

And let's just face it: arriving at climate change talks aboard a fuel hog like Air Force One could send a mixed message -- unless the White House commits to offsetting the big plane's emissions by investing in windmills or tree-planting in a friendly developing country.

So today's question: would an Obama visit to the Copenhagen climate talks help or hurt the chances for a global deal? Let us know what you think.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom (demonstration against Barack Obama and other world leaders outside UN climate change talks in Bangkok, Oct 5, 2009)

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (Obama shakes U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after addressing a U.N. summit on climate change, Sept 22, 2009)

One of the most popular programs brought in by the administration of President Barack Obama, "cash for clunkers", which offered rebates of up to $4,500 to trade in older gas guzzlers, wrapped up on Monday.

Some auto dealers are concerned about the slow pace of reimbursements under the program and the low inventories that have followed in its wake.

(PHOTO: A clunker vehicle sits in a parking lot during the last day of the "Cash For Clunkers" auto rebate program at Courtesy Chevrolet dealership in Phoenix, Arizona, August 24, 2009. REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

See the two video clips below. The first is of Cliff Johnson, president of Texas Motors Ford in Fort Worth, talking about his concerns. The other is from his new vehicle director, Jeremy Pirotte, who talks about inventories.

Government and industry officials say they do not expect the auto rebate program to be renewed in the immediate future, even though it has been popular with consumers and is considered a genuine economic stimulus at a time when the nation is in recession.

Okay, so it's August in Washington. It's hot. Congress has gone home. Even the summer interns are packing up and getting out of town. So it's not surprising that top members of the Obama administration might be ready for a road trip.

That's basically what the White House announced in a statement headlined: "Obama Administration Officials Travel America, Talk Clean Energy Economy." President Obama went to Indiana to announce $2.4 billion in funding for advanced battery and electric drive projects; Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed for Minnesota to look at renewable energy projects and North Carolina to announce a big grant to a lithium battery firm, finishing up the week in Massachusetts to talk about clean energy jobs at Harvard; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went to a solar panel company in Colorado; EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Florida and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke traveled to Missouri.

Probably only a crank would wonder just how much greenhouse gas all this official travel spewed into the atmosphere. There's no hybrid Air Force One, after all. But it does seem like an exquisite irony that, with the best of environmental intentions, the Obama team may have stomped all over the United States with a heavy-duty carbon footprint.

Is it fair to ask that when they talk the talk, they walk the walk -- or offset emissions by funding windmills or other projects that supply renewable energy? Let us know what you think.

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Photo credits: REUTERS/Jason Reed (President Obama speaks in Wakarusa, Indiana, August 5, 2009); REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Windmill turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia, August 28, 2006)

For those keeping track, there are five months left before the December meeting in Copenhagen where the world is supposed to agree on how to tackle climate change after crucial aspects of the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol expire. Before they can agree on anything, they have to have a document to work from, and that’s where people like Michael Zammit Cutajar come in.

He and other diplomats at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will get together next month in Bonn to whittle down a 200-page text to something more manageable. On a visit to Washington, he said he didn’t expect any big breakthroughs at that meeting because “people don’t like to work much in August.” So far, he himself hasn’t read through the whole draft and admits it’s likely to be a tough thing to read: “You pick it up, you look at it, you see three pages, you say ‘interesting,’ you put it down again. It’s not meant to be read top to bottom.”

Zammit Cutajar figures the “crunch issues” are more likely to emerge at a meeting in Bangkok over 10 days in September and October, and at another gathering in Barcelona in November, before the main event in Copenhagen.

But the world negotiations aren’t the only games to watch on climate change. The U.S. Senate is expected to take up a bill to curb greenhouse emissions in September; the House has already narrowly approved one. That doesn’t mean there will be a U.S. law in place by December, and that may not even be necessary, Zammit Cutajar says.

“It would be great if there were a Senate outcome that was strong … a signal from both chambers (of Congress) that they’re on the same track,” he said, recognizing that the House and Senate versions of the legislation would have to be reconciled before any law could go to President Barack Obama’s desk.

Zammit Cutajar uses a cosmic metaphor to describe how a world deal on climate change could develop. “The process of negotiation is sort of creation in reverse, with the big bang coming at the end.”

Stay tuned.

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Photo credits: REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (Grandma Nak Shrine in Bangkok, June 30, 2009)
REUTERS/Albert Gea (Athlete Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica in front of Sagrada Familia church, Barcelona July 22, 2009)

Republicans in the U.S. Congress say they know how much it is going to cost to save the world from the predicted ravages of climate change. But others say their math is way off.
 
"It would cost every family as much as $3,100 a year in additional energy costs and will drive millions of good-paying American jobs overseas," warned House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner in response to House Democrats unveiling their climate-change bill on Tuesday.
 
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell offered the same figure. "According to some estimates, this tax could cost every American household up to $3,100 a year just for doing the same things people have always done, like turning on the lights and doing laundry."
 
There's a problem, though. 
 
The Republicans cite a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study as the basis for their cost estimate. But a lead author of that study complained in a letter to Boehner on Wednesday that the calculation is way off.
 
John Reilly, an economist at MIT's Sloan School of Management, said the average annual cost to U.S. families for controlling emissions of carbon and other harmful greenhouse gases is actually $340.
 
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Reilly said updates to his 2007 study that take into account some higher costs could nudge the figure up to around $440 per household per year.
 
Republicans say they simply took a $366 billion revenue estimate from a climate change bill that sputtered in Congress last year and divided by the number of U.S. households to come up with $3,100. The thinking is that the revenues would be collected in pollution permits to industries, a cost that likely could be passed on to consumers.
 
"Taking that number and saying that is the cost is just wrong," Reilly said, adding that many other calculations, including government rebates to consumers, have to be factored in.
 
Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said there are no assurances yet that consumers would get rebates, which the MIT study assumed, and thus the $3,100 figure is accurate and possibly even higher.
 
"If they (Democrats) change their bill to give money back to consumers, the numbers on cost would change (downward)," Stewart said.
 
Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for Representative Edward Markey, one of Congress' leading advocates of climate control legislation, saw other possibilities.
    
If a range of energy initiatives in coming legislation is factored in -- electric vehicles, improved transmission and other alternative energy steps -- he said that would "significantly cut down the costs and some say would save people money on energy bills."

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Demonstrators for clean energy hold a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 2)