Or rather who will bring him there for the second time in a couple of months?  We know he did duty to Chicago’s bid for the Olympics: can he be persuaded now to do his bit for climate change in December? If so, who can do the persuading?

It seems he is hovering.  Returning from Copenhagen this time he let it be known that he would consider going were he to be invited, but that this wasn’t a meeting - as yet - for Heads of State.  In other words, Obama Copenhagen? It is all still to play for.  The arm is out, but someone still needs to twist it.

He might have been saying to those currently making slow progress towards a new climate treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol: ‘If you build it, I will come.’  Wrong!  The world needs Obama to come and build it. Or at least to lay the foundations.  It’s time for a ‘by the end of the decade.......man on the moon’ declaration.

Climate change is the first truly global issue.  The first time that all the peoples of the world are under the same threat from an advancing disaster which will affect every single person on the planet. We can argue who is responsible, who should pay, who should be protected, but at the end of the day these are side issues. 

Unless we put them to one side we shall have lost the climate change war before it starts. We are already on the brink of those tipping points at which global warming becomes irreversible.  The methane is already bubbling out of the sea and out of the melting permafrost.

Of course, you may choose to ignore what science is telling us - either as to its gravity or to its timescale.  You may think that current events are only a blip. And of course you may be correct. No-one can tell whether tomorrow the glaciers are not going to start advancing again, unlikely though that may be.

But we have a choice. Act now and all we shall lose is a bit of money.  If we don’t act we risk losing a lot of money.  Possibly we risk losing civilisation as we know it a hundred years from now. What would your grandchildren prefer you did?

At the end of the day, apart from Europe, there are only three countries that really matter. China, India and the United States.  Of course, Japan, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Canada and so on matter too, but their agreement will be as nothing if the big four cannot conclude a deal between themselves to turn off the carbon tap.

The deal has to be one initial of principle and commitment. A personal deal. Four leaders who agree to do all in their power to march in a single direction.

The motivation for such agreement has to come primarily from a single source. China will not accept the leadership of the United States, nor vice versa. India, with the greatest respect, has the history and the people, but not the resources. That leaves Europe, always a leader in the climate field, to hold the ring, to broker, to bang heads.

Of course no democratic leader can by themselves deliver a deal.  We work through elected legislatures.  Laws have to be passed, funds voted upon. Nevertheless, a leader like Obama - capable of drawing a vast crowd wherever and whenever he speaks - has great capacity for influence that goes far beyond his own electorate.

For the European Union climate change is now the only strategic issue that counts.  How do we move from unsustainable living to sustainable living?  How we can develop and export renewable and low carbon energy technology to provide the developing world with energy for development?   For it is only by development that the world’s population will stabilise instead of growing exponentially.  How many more mouths can the earth feed? 

The European Union does therefore have the chance - and indeed more than a chance, one might almost say an obligation - to take the lead in this global struggle forward towards sustainability.  But are we prepared to do this?  To stop being parochial and narrow-minded? Even though achieving sustainability may mean great rewards in terms of jobs and income? 

It is against that background - of how to bring to the UN Climate Change Summit, Presidents Obama and Hu, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - that we should judge who should be appointed as President of the European Council under the Lisbon Treaty.

And yes, although it seems unlikely that the Treaty will be in force before the Copenhagen conference begins, a candidate could be appointed at the European Summit later this month.

As soon as a name is chosen that person inevitably will start work even if the telephone calls, the briefings and the meetings are off the record and unofficial until the Treaty comes into force. Plenty of time to begin the influencing.

Besides, Copenhagen is merely a staging post on a long road. The work will be continuing long after. Indeed all the expectations are that progress at the summit itself will be limited with no climate change legislation having been passed in the United States beforehand.

So who, of the available candidates, might be best placed to tackle the job of putting Europe in pole position in the climate change debate, of bending the ears of Presidents, of making the big speeches of lifting eyes from parochial and nationalistic concerns and towards further global horizons?

For this is the job description for a President of the European Council.  This is the job that needs to be done. Who can best do it? Many of you reading this will assume that I am promoting Tony Blair and indeed I am but only because I believe that this is what the job should be about and he alone of the candidates seems to come anywhere near to fulfilling the requirements.

It’s also why I despair at the Lisbon Treaty, having been approved by the Parliaments of all 27 member states, should now rest on the personal whim of two individuals, one of whom is now preparing to indulge in a round of horse-trading. Europe’s parochialism knows no bounds.

Enough! The issues are big. Europe needs to get its act together. Fast.