GOP is trying to sink Obama's global climate pact by assuring world the U.S. won't do its part

President Obama has spent at least a year talking with fellow world leaders about reaching a comprehensive agreement to address climate change at a global summit in Paris in December. He may be talking the talk, congressional Republicans have been saying in their own outreach to foreign countries, but America won't walk the walk.

Neil Chatterjee, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has been reaching out to selected developed and developing countries "that have long expressed doubts about the sincerity of the United States' climate efforts," Politico reports, telling them they are right to be skeptical, in part because "Republicans intend to fight Obama's climate agenda at every turn." Obama is pushing for a political agreement, not a treaty, so he won't have to get the accord ratified in the GOP-led Senate — where it has "no chance" of getting a two-thirds majority, a Republican energy lobbyist tells Politico. "There are few certainties in life, but that is one of them."

The Obama administration doesn't seem to think Republicans will be any more successful in this push than they were when they wrote Iranian leaders warning them to abandon the nuclear deal. But because it won't be a treaty, a future president could theoretically renege on U.S. commitments. "You live by the rhetoric, you die by the rhetoric," says Jeremy Rabkin, a George Mason University professor and critic of Obama's climate policies.

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