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Never a greater need for resolve

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A Happy New Year to you. New Year is traditionally a time for making resolutions that will most likely be quickly broken, such as quitting smoking, cutting back on alcohol, walking rather than driving to work, going on a diet, exercising at the gym, spending more time with the family, keeping a diary. Often treated lightly, they are usually composed as a way to take stock of one's life.

It is high time for world leaders to make their own resolutions, not just for themselves but for the good of their countries and the world. Sadly, there is a common theme to what they need to do - stop looking through narrow national spectacles and see that we are, all 7 billion of us, inhabitants of a fragile earth that is being destroyed by shortsighted politicians and personal selfishness.

This was depressingly demonstrated at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. The big powers, represented by their president or prime minister, all promised movingly to reduce rising carbon emissions that threaten to destroy the planet - but the best they could agree on was an agreement to work out an agreement that, if fully implemented, would limit global temperature rises to about 6 degrees Celsius. Beyond 2 degrees would push us to the point of disaster.

On a recent tour of continental Europe, India, Southeast Asia and Japan, I was struck by how many people were wrapped in their own small worlds, angry at anyone who intruded on their space. Asashoryu, the Mongolian sumo grand champion, when asked why there was no Japanese champion, contemptuously claimed that young Japanese lacked discipline and dedication. The same is true in Europe and the US.

Barack Obama has made many grand promises, but his visions, though wrapped in fine oratory, have too often been followed by spineless performance: witness how China led him by the nose when he visited, while at home Republicans have harassed him at every turn. The US does not understand the new global reality that it is strong but getting weaker and needs to be a partner in steering the world away from the abyss.

Resolution for Obama: get a grip on the new global reality.

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