While Congress has stalled in enacting a reduction to new greenhouse gas emissions, the administration appears to be looking at ways to address global warming by adapting existing executive powers.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality last week issued a report conceding that the government’s best approach for dealing with climate change would be adaptation—even if prompt efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were to materialize.

The report, Progress Report of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force: Recommended Actions in Support of a National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, points to the need for federal agencies to set a good example for others attempting to cope with questions of climate.

“The Federal Government has an important and unique role in climate adaptation, but it is only one part of a broader effort that must include multiple levels of government and private and non-governmental partners throughout the country,” the report stated. “In particular, Federal leadership, guidance, information, and support are vital to planning for and implementing adaptive actions.”

For all its forward thinking, though, the report’s recommendations in some ways show how far behind the curve the federal government is in dealing with this issue. The first priority, for example is to “encourage and mainstream” adaptation planning across the federal system.

“Climate change will challenge the mission, operations, and programs of nearly every Federal agency,” the report states. “Ensuring that the Federal Government has the capacity to execute its missions and maintain important services in the face of climate change is essential.”

That agencies need to be told to “mainstream” climate change into their planning nearly ten years after a scientific consensus was reached demonstrates the federal government is late to the party—and far from ready to dance.

While there are partners aplenty, the United States has refused to bust a move when it comes instituting comprehensive and meaningful climate action. A faux pas that has drawn the derision of developing countries and has lent a pessimistic outlook to the upcoming December Cancún climate summit. There appears to be little hope of meeting even the modest global mitigation goals agreed upon at the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009, according to a recent New York Times article.

Perhaps we'll do better at home if we’re able to get a handle on how much—or if—we’re improving. The report calls for “better integration of science into decision making; taking a collaborative approach to address the complex jurisdictional issues in dealing with states, tribes and other entities; enhancing efforts to lead international adaptation; and [improving] coordination of science, services, and assessments to better support stakeholders.”

The problem is that there are no standards to evaluate federal efforts. While the report does propose establishing “performance metrics for evaluating federal adaptation efforts,” it doesn’t offer concrete guidelines or examples of what these might be.

Even though first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record, according to data compiled by from the satellite record by the University of Alabama-Huntsville, mitigation still can't catch the beat. The United States and the European Union have set emissions goals only a few percentage points below 1990 levels, and only two industrialized countries—Japan and Norway—say they’ll dramatically reduce emissions.

A study last month in Environmental Research Letters found that even if the industrialized nations agree to cut emissions by 50 percent of 1990 levels by 2050, there’s only a 50 percent chance of keeping temperature increases below the critical two degrees C mark—leaving adaptation performing alone for a tough crowd.