ANALYSIS: Awaiting the Sarkozy show at Copenhagen Copenhagen climate conference

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Dec 5, 2009, 1:08 GMT

ANALYSIS: Awaiting the Sarkozy show at Copenhagen By Siegfried Mortkowitz, dpa Eds: Part of a regular series on climate change to accompany the Copenhagen climate conference, scheduled for Dec 7-18; epa Archive photo 00000401950814, others available =

Paris (dpa) - Listening to him in the run-up to this month's UN climate conference in Copenhagen, French President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be more in his element than the average world leader at such international conferences on global threats.

In November, he stood on the steps of the Elysee Palace with Brazilian President Luiz Inacia Lula da Silva and proclaimed that the two of them had agreed on a plan to save the world from global warming.

Then, trailing press releases like confetti, he traveled to Brazil and the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago to trumpet the proposal.

But this was just typically Sarkozian. As head of the European Union during the economic crisis, he convoked numerous summits, which he approached with a messiah's zeal and a tap dancer's sensitivity to his audience.

Before every G8 or G20 summit on the crisis, he loudly proclaimed his intention to save the world from bad capitalism and threatened to walk out of the meeting if it did not come up with concrete solutions.

Sarkozy never walked out, and capitalism remains pretty much what it was before the crisis. Now, that same table-thumping advocacy and media awareness has accompanied Sarkozy's approach to Copenhagen.

Part of that approach involves the presentation of his plan to save the world climate.

Titled, with a typical sense of drama, Copenhagen: A Project for the World, it declares that 'action is urgent and unavoidable, and the time has come for truth, justice and leadership.'

The 15-page document calls for 'a commitment by industrialized countries to an 80 per cent reduction (relative to) 1990 in overall GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions by 2050, with individual and collective reductions in the range of 25 to 40 per cent vs 1990 by 2020.'

Sarkozy's 'project' - which was actually drawn up by his Environment Minister, Jean-Louis Borloo - also contains a 'climate justice plan designed specifically' for poor countries, which would benefit from financial support from the international community through a tax on financial transactions.

Sarkozy's plan has already received support from the Brazilian president and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, but Brussels and France's European partners have been strangely silent on it.

But environmental groups have been outspoken in their scepticism of Sarkozy's real commitment to the proposal and the fight against global warming.

In a recent ranking of world leaders on their environmental policies, Greenpeace gave the French president a dismal 3.7 out of a possible 10, one of the worst marks in Europe, well behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and only slightly ahead of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The group described Sarkozy as using 'beautiful words' that lacked concrete details and almost never matched his actions.

In addition, in an open letter to Sarkozy, a coalition of environmental groups said it was 'astonished by the fact that most of the elements in the (Copenhagen) plan have never before been officially supported by France, not within the European Union nor on the international scene.'

The group also noted that 'the European Union speaks with a single voice on the international scene' and asked if Sarkozy's plan had been presented to the EU and was part of its Copenhagen presentation.

This scepticism has metastasized in some quarters into the belief that the plan and Sarkozy's high-profile cheerleading for it are at least partly motivated by more narrow interests than saving the world - such as French regional elections to be held in March.

After all, the environment has become a hot issue in France. In last June's European elections, a coalition of environmental parties led by Green Party icon Daniel Cohn-Bendit drew more than 15 per cent of the vote. Polls show them drawing as much in the March elections.

As an added bonus, whenever Sarkozy has been prominent on the world stage, his popularity has soared at home; he was never so popular as when he headed the EU and made himself the global point man in the fight against the economic crisis.

As the Copenhagen conference nears, the French president has been working to steal the show, demanding, bullying and grabbing centre stage as much as possible. And, if history is a guide, when it ends he will present its results, and himself, in the best possible light.

For Nicolas Sarkozy knows that, besides being the right thing to do, saving the world from global warming is just good politics.