Conclusive proof just in that the President and his wife are keen readers of the Citizen Renaissance book and blog. It’s been reported that Michelle has taken the secret-service codename ‘renaissance’ – so that of course makes her Citizen Renaissance.
I’m glad the first-family are tuning in to our blog as I have concerns that the President is not taking the perfect storm seriously enough. Its clear that his chief economist Larry Summers and head of Treasury Timothy Geitner simply don’t have issues such as climate change on their radars. Also the word on the street is that that Van Jones – White House special adviser on ‘green jobs’ has been given an ultimatum that unless he delivers several hundred thousands of these ‘green jobs’ pretty fast, he and greenery will fall from grace. Geitner et al are exclusively focused on financial sustainability and apparently find the whole ‘green thing’ an annoying distraction which they wish their leader had never raised.
More worryingly still its clear that the White House has done precious little to soften Congress up to the inevitable huge amounts of money which will need to be on the table if China and other developing economies are to be encouraged to agree to a deal at Copenhagen. This bodes very badly for any hoped-for deal. If the US refuse to play ball you can be sure that China won’t.
Meanwhile back in blighty our own ‘Geitner and Summers’ double-act – Alastair “don’t call me” Darling and Mandy O’Mandy – have been doing their damndest to ensure that ‘green jobs’ are as brown as possible.
Let’s hope Barack lives up to his code-name ‘renegade’ and pushes a last minute deal through Congress in time to save the planet in Copenhagen. In the meantime to take your minds of inconvenient truths such as impending climate-chaos you can vote on your favourite first-family secret-service codename on the ‘meaningful distractions’ website at the first link in this blog.
