Barack Obama, Environment

OBAMA FOR USA. Mr. Obama came to office promising to a greener future for the nation. In his budget, he called on Congress to close the "carbon loophole" by adopting a cap-and-trade system for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. He has promoted wind and other renewable forms of power, saying that for the first time the Interior Department would begin leasing federal waters for offshore production of electricity from the movement of wind, waves and tides.

Although Mr. Obama has pledged swift and comprehensive action to combat global climate change, his administration has taken a cautious and rather passive role on the issue, proclaiming broad goals while remaining aloof from details of climate legislation currently in Congress.

The president's budget initially included roughly $650 billion in revenue over 10 years from a cap-and-trade emissions plan that he wants adopted. But the administration, while insisting that its health-care initiative be protected, did not fight to keep cap-and-trade in the budget resolutions that Congress eventually passed.

The question now asked is whether the administration has scaled back its global-warming goals, at least for 2009, or whether it is engaged in sophisticated misdirection. Perhaps it is engaging in a bit of both. While addressing climate change appears to be slipping down the president's list of priorities for the year, he is holding in reserve a powerful club to regulate carbon dioxide emissions through executive authority.

That club takes the form of Environmental Protection Agency's announcement on April 17 that it would begin regulating the gases blamed for the warming of the planet, an authority granted the agency by the Supreme Court's reading of the Clean Air Act. Administration officials consistently say they would much prefer that Congress write new legislation to pre-empt the E.P.A. regulatory power, but they are clearly holding it in reserve as a prod to reluctant lawmakers and recalcitrant industries and as evidence of good faith to other nations.

Still, the agency's regulations would take months to write and years to become fully effective. Meanwhile, Congress is already starting work on energy and climate legislation, though without significant guidance from the White House, at least in public, or its endorsement.

Business lobbyists welcome the go-slow approach, saying the issue is too complicated and too costly to be rushed, especially in a recession.

The Obama administration is issuing new national emissions and mileage requirements for cars and light trucks to resolve a long-running conflict among the states, the federal government and auto manufacturers. Mr. Obama is planning to combine California's tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard. As a result, cars and light trucks sold in the nation will be roughly 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016.

In late May, the administration stepped into a major environmental dispute by saying that no new timber-cutting or road project could begin in roadless areas of national forests without the permission of the secretary of agriculture.

On June 28, a day after strongly praising energy legislation passed by the House, President Obama spoke out against a provision in the bill that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept global-warming pollution limits.

He said that certain energy-intensive American industries, such as steel, aluminum, paper and glass, had legitimate concerns about low-cost competitors in developing nations. But he warned that trade sanctions that are based on the extent to which other countries curb carbon dioxide emissions might be illegal and counterproductive.

The president acknowledged that the initial targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions set by the legislation, which narrowly cleared the House on June 26, were quite modest and that they would likely not satisfy many other governments or environmental campaigners. He said he hoped he would be able to build upon the early targets to fashion a more robust program in the future.

Mr. Obama predicted that similar energy legislation faced a difficult slog through the Senate and would require months of tough negotiations and additional compromises to win enough votes for passage.

On the world stage, at the July meeting of leaders of the Group of 8 nations, negotiators for 17 leading polluters abandoned targets in a draft agreement. The world's biggest developing nations, led by China and India, refused to commit to specific goals for slashing heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting the drive to build a global consensus by the end of 2010 to reverse the threat of climate change. But negotiators embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and developing nations agreed to make "meaningful" if unspecified reductions in emissions.

The mixed results underscored the challenges for Mr. Obama as he tries to force progress toward a climate treaty. With Europe pressing for more aggressive action and Congress favoring a more restrained approach, Mr. Obama finds himself navigating complicated political currents at home and abroad. If he cannot ultimately bring along developing countries, no climate deal will be effective.