Senate Poses Obstacles to Obama's Climate Pledge From left, Chris Jackson/Getty Images; Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images; Doug Mills/The New York Times PROBLEMS President Obama faces opposition in Congress to his climate plans. WASHINGTON - President Obama jets off to Copenhagen later this week to try to place an American stamp on a global climate change agreement. He will be trailed by a cloud of diplomats and bureaucrats all proclaiming the progress his administration has made on global warming in its 11 months in office. What he will not be carrying is the assent of Congress to whatever he commits the United States to do. That's a problem for a leader who represents the world's second biggest greenhouse gas polluter, behind China. While the House passed a bill in June that embodies Mr. Obama's pledge to reduce those emissions to about 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next decade, the Senate has barely begun to debate the issue. The Senate is split on global warming policy into numerous factions divided by ideology, geography and economic interest. And that's just the Democratic caucus. Republicans are nearly united in opposition to the kind of legislation that would be needed to match Mr. Obama's ambitions. Without Senate action - and, down the road, Senate concurrence in any climate treaty he negotiates - Mr. Obama's promises are merely that, almost certainly not enough to persuade other nations to commit to greenhouse gas reductions. Can Mr. Obama surmount those problems in his latest effort to save the world? Or will he fly away from Copenhagen as empty-handed as he did in September, when he went there in a losing effort to promote Chicago as the site for the 2016 Olympics? "This is definitely a Goldilocks problem," said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and an energy adviser to the Obama campaign last year. The trick is finding something just right in balancing the importance of demonstrating international leadership while not undermining the legislative dynamic here at home. Mr. Obama enters the Copenhagen negotiations without anything close to consensus in his own party for his cap-and-trade plan to reduce emissions. The issue pits coastal liberals against the so-called Brown Dogs of the Rust Belt and the Great Plains whose states depend heavily on coal for power and manufacturing for jobs. At least a dozen of these Democrats have made it clear they will not accept any legislation - or any treaty - that threatens their industries or jobs. Another Senate coalition emerged last week behind a proposal to tax fossil fuels and return most of the revenues to consumers to compensate for higher energy prices. But that plan, though it has drawn some Republican support, is also unlikely to meet the 60-vote threshold required to call a vote. It is not at all clear today that Mr. Obama and his allies in the Senate can overcome these obstacles next year, or ever. And without the Senate, the entire international project is in jeopardy because without the participation of the United States - which emits 20 percent of all greenhouse gases - any international regime is bound to fall short. See: Kyoto Protocol. That was the ill-fated 1997 climate accord that the Senate refused to consider because it made no binding demands on developing nations to limit their emissions. The Copenhagen conference is supposed to come up with a framework to replace it, and one of the big fights standing in the way is the level of emissions reductions that developing nations are willing to accept. "It's a nine-dimensional political challenge," Mr. Grumet said. There is absolutely no way to satisfy all desires. Mr. Obama is trying to both prod the Senate into action and go around it with a series of administrative actions that will begin unilaterally to address the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrate to other nations the president's will to tackle the issue. His administration struck a deal with automakers to increase fuel efficiency by 30 percent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a similar amount by 2016. Some $80 billion in stimulus spending has been earmarked for clean energy projects, energy efficiency and research on capturing carbon emissions. The government will require that all major pollution sources report their greenhouse gas emissions starting in January. And earlier this month the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its finding that carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases pose a threat to human health and welfare, paving the way for sweeping, economy-wide regulation of global warming pollutants. E.P.A. regulation is the trump card that the administration is holding if Congress continues to dither. But Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that he much prefers a messy Congressional compromise. Trying to remake much of the economy by regulatory fiat is certain to become entangled in years of litigation. Yet Mr. Obama cannot simply tell the other leaders at Copenhagen that he must await assent from Congress before he can commit the United States on global warming. He is asking the leaders of Western Europe and Australia to commit troops to support his buildup in Afghanistan and he can hardly stiff them on climate change, a global threat many of them consider as menacing as terrorism. In other words, his trip this week may have as much to do with Kandahar as Copenhagen. But that does not necessarily help his cause at home. Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, is the leader of Congressional skeptics on the science of climate change and the global efforts to address it. He said that Mr. Obama is handcuffed by Senate fractiousness on the issue and new doubts among some about the basic science underpinning the talks. The overwhelming majority of atmospheric scientists believe the planet is warming and humans are responsible. "I suspect President Obama is making the trip to Copenhagen in order to "save" the climate conference," Mr. Inhofe said. Yet no amount of lofty rhetoric or promises of future commitments can save it. This is due in large part to the fact cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate is dying on the vine, and, as important, are recent revelations of leading climate scientists who appear to have manufactured the climate "consensus" casting doubt over the entire global warming enterprise." All of which leaves Mr. Obama in a bind. More than a year ago, Mr. Obama said of climate change: "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. But when Mr. Obama and other world leaders met last month, they were forced to abandon the goal of reaching a binding accord at Copenhagen because the American political system is not ready to agree to a treaty that would force the United States, over time, to accept profound changes in its energy, transport and manufacturing sectors. So the leaders said they planned to leave Copenhagen with an interim political deal and work toward a binding treaty next year. Delay, it turns out, was the only option.