The Obama administration has a single mission as it heads to the climate change negotiating table for the first time on Sunday: convincing other countries that the United States cares about global warming.
After eight years on the sidelines, the US delegation’s new leadership says it is ready to assume a central role in crafting a new agreement to slash greenhouse gases. But whether the world’s second largest source of heat-trapping pollution will be ready to sign onto a new deal by the end of the year could depend on Congress.
To showcase America’s commitment, the State Department dispatched US climate envoy Todd Stern to Bonn, Germany, to attend the first of a series of largely technical meetings, beginning on Sunday. The talks are hoped to lay the groundwork for a new international climate agreement to be signed at a conference in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Stern said his participation in the talks is to punctuate the United States’ newfound determination to deal with the climate problem.
”I frankly thought it was important for me to come and make the first statement on behalf of the United States and say we’re back, we’re serious, we’re here, we’re committed and we’re going to try to
get this thing done,” said Stern. ”That is why I am here. That is the point I want to convey. We want to convey that we mean it.”
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is hosting the Bonn talks, said participants ”will be very excited” to hear Stern outline the basic principles that will guide the United States in the coming negotiating process.
They clearly are expecting a new tone after eight years during which the former Bush administration repeatedly made clear its disdain for any climate discussions whose aim was a commitment to mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.
This time the US delegation represents the views of a White House committed to mandatory action to deal with climate change. And unlike 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was drafted, there is now a Democratic-controlled Congress moving to accept mandatory limits on greenhouse gases as well.
At the time of the conference in Kyoto, Japan, the United States lacked support for mandatory actions to achieve the reductions it had signed on to. As a result, the Kyoto Protocol was never ratified by the
US Senate. The Bush administration later rejected it outright, citing the lack of participation from China, India and other developing countries that are major polluters.
The lack of involvement by developing countries and the cost of emission cuts in the form of higher energy bills, issues that dominated the US debate over the Kyoto accord for years, have not disappeared.
They are likely to continue to haunt the Obama administration as it takes over the negotiations.
Obama already has taken significant strides to reduce US greenhouse gases and wants Congress to enact a cap-and-trade programme that the administration says would reduce US global warming pollution 80% by the middle of the century.
”The president has embarked on a strong domestic programme already, and there is much more coming,” Stern said at a briefing in Berlin on Friday in advance of the talks.
Stern said the American position on an international climate agreement will be framed by what happens in Congress. It is not realistic for the United States to enter into an agreement that does
not match what Congress plans to enact, he argued.
The reductions expected to be required by Congress will be the basis for what the United States can commit to reducing in any international
agreement, said Stern.
Can Congress, which is also juggling ways to respond to an economic recession and deal with other priorities such as changing the US healthcare system, come through on climate change?
”This will be a big, big fight to get the domestic piece done,” Stern conceded.
Can the United States balance European expectations with what is politically viable?
Many European countries want the Americans to adopt stronger short-term targets, equal to a 25% to 40% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020. Obama has called for reaching 1990 levels by then, which would be a cut of roughly 15%.
Stern already has warned European leaders that their demands will lead to stalemate.
”Reducing 25-40% below 1990 levels would be a good idea if it were doable,” he said at a recent conference in Washington, but it seems ”beyond the realm of the feasible”.
In Bonn, the US team is expected to spend most of its time listening and forming relationships, rather than discussing concrete proposals.
That ”is unfortunate given the intense timetable between now and Copenhagen, but understandable,” said Jennifer Havercamp, who leads Environmental Defence Fund’s international climate negotiations team.
”It will not achieve a lot of substantive progress in the [Bonn] negotiations because the Obama team is so new.” – Sapa-AP