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Secretary of State John Kerry on cooperation with India on climate mitigation and adaptation.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/kerry-proposes-u-s-india-push-on-carbon-and-climate/?_r=0#more-49918

Scroll down to read # 5 in this (early) screed here.

Why is the administration doing what we said it should do several years ago?

(See also yesterday's post)

Because they've thought it through and realized that this is the best combination of the available options to protect and expand democracy and control climate change at the same time.

Because we have to do both at once, or non-democratic powers finish up in charge.

And the option that environmentalists think they most want -- an all-out effort to reduce emissions by switching immediately in very large scale to renewables and energy efficiency, abandoning coal, oil and natural gas, fracked or otherwise, ASAP?

The 350.org solution, in other words? The option that would have won praise from environmentalists for Tuesday's speech, instead of the damned by faint praise responses that we instead heard?

(An example -- here)

Well, that's not really available, at least to this administration. That's because although it might (eventually) bring relief on the climate front would a) likely cause another recession, b) hand further geopolitical power to the Chinese and Russians on a plate, and c) lose the Democrats the next presidential election.

And it might not bring relief in any case, if China, India, Brazil, Russia and other rapidly developed countries don't follow suit.

India is our most likely ally in this effort, and the world's largest democracy.

(While America is NOT, as Kerry said, the world's oldest. That honor would, in fact, go to Iceland.)

See, that's the problem with the climate problem. It's not just another environmental problem. The best solution to the climate problem would hasten the decline of western democracy. As one commentator said (Jessy Tolkan, here), in approval of the administration's recent messaging, we have to "thread the needle" here.