John Podesta first began advising Barack Obama in the summer of 2008, when the junior senator’s improbable rise from mixed-race son of a single mother to president of the United States was acquiring a giddy sense of inevitability. Climate change was a top concern for Podesta — and, it seemed, for Obama himself. In July, a group of experts informally representing the Democratic candidate traveled to Beijing for confidential talks with Chinese officials, hoping to foster a new era of climate cooperation after eight years of obstruction on the part of the Bush Administration.
Podesta, who as White House chief…
