Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and former head of the Sierra Club of Canada.

Mr. President:
It is January 2009 and the clock is ticking.

You face a huge and ugly deficit of environmental neglect. The world will meet a year from now in Copenhagen, where you must reverse the past eight years of irresponsible and reckless climate policy. The United States must no longer shirk the moral obligation to reduce its fossil-fuel dependency and wasteful energy habits and to cut deep and fast into its greenhouse-gas emissions.

According to the International Energy Agency, worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions must begin to decline--everywhere--no later than 2015. The Copenhagen negotiation is the last chance to get the world's agreement on binding targets to meet that deadline. Failure to do so will lead to accelerating, runaway global warming, threatening human civilization itself. The clock is ticking. If you make haste, you can save the world.