Here is a proposal for the next American president. The US should take the lead in setting up a massive, publicly funded research project to tackle climate change. The American government has, in the past, shown that it is capable of sponsoring pioneering science – from the Manhattan project that produced the atomic bomb to the space programme. Why not apply American energy, money and know-how to a new Manhattan project on global warming?

The secrets of the bomb and space programmes were kept closely guarded for security reasons. But climate change is a security issue for the whole world. So a US-led research project on technologies to tackle global warming could be a much more open and international affair. It would also have to be much more wide-ranging than the bomb or space programmes – sponsoring research on everything from alternative energy to carbon-capture and geo-engineering (such as efforts to create a stratospheric shield in the atmosphere).

The main purpose of any such programme would be to combat the obvious threats posed by climate change. But it would also have the incidental benefit of blunting one of the main sources of global anti-Americanism – the idea that the US is too casual about climate change.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

I get the message. The fact that my last post attracted all of nil comments suggests to me it is time to go on holiday. I intend to fall silent for the next 10 days or so - before re-surfacing in the US, on January 3rd - the day of the Iowa caucus. If I blog before then, it’s probably a bad sign.

But before I quit, here are a couple of things I would like to draw to your attention. First, a delightfully unreverential account of interviewing Al Gore, by my friend Stephen Sackur of the BBC. I normally hate that back-scratching formula, "my friend x of the x". But Stephen really is a friend, he had the office next door to me in Brussels for several years. However, I have learnt that I have to be cautious about admitting friendship with Stephen Sackur. Although he is naturally a rather mild-mannered person, he is the host of a television show, "Hardtalk", which demands an aggressive and adverserial pose from the interviewer. This often leaves the interviewee distinctly pissed off. When I interviewed Michel Platini of Uefa recently and mentioned conversationally that Sackur is a friend of mine, Platini’s face darkened _"Ard Talk..", he exclaimed contemptuosly and I realised it was a good idea to drop the subject.

I probably shouldn’t mention Sackur to "my good friend, Al Gore" either - to judge from Stephen’s account of their post-interview chat.

(more…)

I won’t make sarcastic comments about the "carbon footprint" caused by all those world leaders convening in Bali to discuss climate change. Everybody else has already made the same point. Plus, I hate the phrase "carbon footprint". And I have some sympathy with the urge to visit Bali. Its a really nice place - the Four Seasons in Bali is probably the best hotel I have ever stayed in. I wish the delegates joy of it.

But all the bitching about Bali is in danger of obscuring the real point. Climate change is a really, really serious threat - and it is good that world leaders are at least trying to do something about it - even if they have chosen to meet in a luxury resort. Let me direct you to two articles that I think give a good idea of what is at stake.

(more…)

The last couple of days in New York have provided a chance to compare the styles of two presidents and a nearly-president. On Tuesday George W Bush spoke to the UN. On Wednesday, a few blocks from the UN, Bill Clinton opened his 2007 Clinton Global Initiative. And - in the opening session - he shared a platform with Al Gore. Rather to my surprise, I thought the famously wooden Gore gave the most impressive and charismatic performance of the three men - aided by the fact that the opening session of the CGI focused heavily on his special subject: climate change.

Relations betweeen the Gore and Clinton camps have been tense since 2000 when, in the aftermath of the Lewinsky scandal, Gore’s presidential campaign deliberately tried to put some distance between him and Clinton. But in the opening CGI session, the two men seemed to get on fine. In fact, I rather longed for Gore to disrupt the sugary sweetness of the occasion by making a shock announcement that he will run for the presidency against Hillary. That would have put Bill on the spot.

Clinton’s presentation was a reminder of his formidable ability to combine personal charm, with a nerdy command of policy detail and relentless optimism. He still favours argument by anecdote. Clinton’s favourite rhetorical technique is to outline some huge policy problem, and then point to a local example - preferably combined with an uplifting personal story - that points the way forward and shows that all problems are soluble. In the opening panel, Clinton used Lee Scott - the boss of Walmart, who was also on the platform - as a sort of prop.

(more…)

Is the "surge" working? Both the American and the Iraqi governments have sounded a note of slight optimism recently. Even the news that the US is to send more troops to Iraq could be taken as a good sign - the original announcement of 21,500 extra troops was at the very low end of what "surge" advocates thought was necessary - so dispatching further troops could be a signal that the Bush administration really is committed to making this new strategy work. Robert Kagan, a neo-conservative academic (and brother of one of the intellectual architects of the surge plan) makes the case that the "surge" is already producing progress.

I would love to believe Kagan is right. But the Iraq Body Count project, which monitors the violence in Iraq more closely than any other impartial group, does not agree. Its latest weekly analysis shows no let up in the violence, and is the usual compilation of gut-wrenching stories. The Swoop foreign-policy analysis service asserts that President Bush is being told privately that the new strategy is not working.

(more…)

One of the unpleasant side effects of global warming is that it makes good weather seem faintly sinister. I enjoyed wandering around London without having to wear a coat this weekend – but should this really be happening in December? Fortunately, the weather today is foul. So now I am feeling more relaxed about global warming.

David Miliband, Britain’s environment secretary and climate change evangelist, is operating on a similarly elevated intellectual level. In a blog entry he seeks to put the recent warm weather into some context.

But British climate-change sceptics –a fairly beleaguered bunch until recently – have had their morale boosted by a long and closely-argued attack on the science of global warming, published last month in the Sunday Telegraph. It seems to have become a new sacred text for climate-change sceptics.

(more…)

I sometimes ask myself whether, in 20 years’ time, I will look back on everything I am writing at the moment and wonder why I wasted so much time on relative trivialities such as the Iraq war or the future of the Bush administration. Will such issues seem like footnotes in history, compared with the consequences of global warming?

A similar question of priorities has obviously occurred to Tony Blair. In the run-up to the most recent European Union summit, he and Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, sent a joint letter about climate change to the other 23 EU leaders. “We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points,” they warned.

None of the other European leaders disputed this vision of impending catastrophe. But if you look at the conclusions that came out of the summit, global warming appears like just another issue on the EU leaders’ “to do list”: review innovation policy; reach agreement on EU patent; improve internal decision-making procedures; save planet.

This mismatch between rhetoric and reality may be about to change, however. Climate change is moving sharply up the EU’s agenda.

This is an extract from Gideon Rachman’s regular Tuesday column in the FT - the remainder is available for FT.com subscribers here.