President Obama will attend the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen on December 9, Reuters first reported.

It has been unclear for months whether Obama would attend the global summit. He is without climate change legislation. And since summer the prospects for cap-and-trade's passage have dramatically dwindled.

The New York Times reported Monday that the Obama administration will propose short-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the conference. As the Times notes, from a political standpoint, the proposed targets are partly an effort to win the global blame game.

Inevitably, any failure to attain an international agreement will fall heavily on the United States. But some concrete U.S. proposals will help offset American culpability.

China recently surpassed the United States as the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the primary gas linked to climate change, almost a decade before experts once predicted. The U.S. remains the largest per capita emitter, as China readily notes, and the second largest emitter overall.

Naturally, Obama was hesitant to appear in Denmark without legislation or any concrete proposals. The House has passed its version of the climate change bill. But Senate passage deserves long odds.

To the discredit of the Democratic leadership and Obama, the prolonged health care debate has had significant collateral damage in Congress. And there is no more significant legislative casualty than the climate change bill.

Energy reform was always going to be the more difficult push. But today there is little patience among moderate Democrats to swallow another bitter pill. The economy and jobs will dominate next year's legislative agenda. This White House has leaked to reporters that Obama intends to seize next January's State of the Union address as a pivot point from health care to the economy. Almost any bill next year will be framed as a jobs bill, as Democrats are attempting to do with cap-and-trade.

In the near term, however, this president had to keep his eye on cap-and-trade's impact on the international stage. Obama's absence from Copenhagen would have only further undermined the conference and his effort—which is thus far more symbolism than substance—to reengage the international community.

Obama's nonattendance would have also provided some bad political theater. Obama traveled to Copenhagen earlier this year in a failed eleventh hour bid to help his native Chicago win the Olympics. One can envision the embarrassing comparison had Obama not flown to Copenhagen for, let's say, a more substantial world affair.