Obama Urged to Attend Climate Summit With Bipartisan Senate Plan in Hand

An environmentalist and a retired vice admiral made the case Thursday that President Obama should personally attend the Copenhagen climate-change summit next month and bring with him two substantial signs that America is serious about curbing global warming: the sweeping cap-and-trade bill already passed by the House, and a bipartisan framework for getting a climate bill through the Senate.

Carter Roberts, CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, said that would send other countries a clear signal that the United States is ready to lead on climate change, and they therefore would be willing to make commitments in Copenhagen to restricting the carbon emissions that cause global warming. A framework is enough, he said, if enough senators are on board.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham have published a proposal for a bipartisan climate bill. In private conversations, Roberts said, a number of other senators have said they will sign on to "the right compromise." In the case of Arizona Sen. John McCain, he said, that would mean including nuclear power as a component of the bill.

Roberts and retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, speaking at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, said the United Nations summit in Copenhagen needs to produce a legally enforceable agreement so countries won't abandon their commitments to reduce emissions.

McGinn said international agreements always raise concerns about national sovereignty, but in some cases -- like nuclear agreements and the prospective climate-change pact -- they are worth it because they allow us to sleep better at night. "There are good binding international agreements in our past," he said. They're not perfect, he added, but they are subject to constant adjustment.

McGinn and other defense experts have been bringing national security concerns to the debate over climate change, pointing out the intensified instability that floods, drought and other global-warming consequences could bring to places that are already riven by ethnic, religious and other conflicts. I have written about their research here. Click here to read my interview with former Republican senator John Warner, a former Navy secretary, who has traveled the country with McGinn to discuss the national security implications of climate change.

Click here to read more on the breakfast, and the two unlikely allies, from Sphere's Andrea Stone.