Quality | 2010.02.24
Hostage to US hot air | Isabel Hilton
The climate debate in the US – and so the world – is mired in political weakness and infighting
In Delhi last week, Professor Jeffrey Sachs , the guru of sustainable development from Columbia University, delivered a sobering message about US climate politics. There was very little chance, he said, that the US would pass climate legislation this year, and almost no chance the Senate would ever adopt cap and trade, the system by which enterprises trade permits to emit within ever tighter limits. He himself, he added, was not sorry. He strongly preferred a carbon tax as a simpler and more effective mechanism.
There are many who share his preference, but the chances of the US legislating such a tax seem equally remote. Besides, if the US turns away from carbon trading, the future of other carbon trading systems seems perilous.
For the EU in particular, this is bad news. If Sachs is right, the chances that the Copenhagen accord , a vague statement of intent to limit the global average temperature rise to 2C, will be translated into a legally binding instrument with some chance of achieving that goal become very slim. If the US cannot legislate, it cannot sign or comply with a new treaty. Without the US, China and India will not take on legally binding commitments. Without the world\'s biggest emitters, efforts to limit emissions will fail.
The Obama administration, according to Sachs, has not abandoned the battle. If it cannot fight a climate bill through the Senate, there are alternatives. One is to go for a simpler energy bill to mandate efficiencies and promote alternatives to fossil fuels, since even the most recalcitrant coal-state Senators might be persuaded that US dependence on "foreign oil" is a national security weakness. And, in the absence of emissions legislation, the administration can use presidential powers and the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the country\'s path to a cleaner, greener future.
Both are under active consideration. The EPA\'s "endangerment finding" in December last year, that CO2 and other greenhouse gases threaten human health and the environment, and that the EPA is therefore obliged to regulate, is a step along the way. (That finding, though, is now under attack: Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, is working on a having it overturned in the Senate.)
But nothing can disguise the fact that the over-arching framework of the Kyoto protocol , with its potential to unlock finance for clean development in the emerging economies, has no future in this scenario. Given the condition of public finances in the developed world, there is little prospect of western taxpayers stepping up with the sums required. Without private sector finance, the framework begins to crumble away.
Kyoto, it is worth remembering, was largely a US invention, the means by which the Clinton administration could discuss financing climate mitigation without mentioning tax. Other nations reluctantly accepted it in order that the US, then the world\'s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, could be included in the global effort to curb them. But, though Clinton signed the treaty, Congress rejected it. Now the US wants to dismantle it, blaming Europe for its inefficiencies and modest achievements.
It is not just in Europe that cap and trade has supporters. At state level in the US, limited forms of it exist: nine north-eastern states have been trading emissions from power plants, and a coalition of seven US states and five Canadian provinces have been working towards building their own cap and trade system, due to begin trading in 2012.
That initiative, however, also faces trouble. In one member state, Utah, politicians have approved a resolution which implies climate change science is a "conspiracy". Another, Arizona, dropped out of cap and trade plans last week, citing recession as its excuse. And California\'s impressive climate programme is under attack on similar grounds from Dan Logue, a Republican member of the state assembly. In addition, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is stepping down this year, and it is by no means clear a successor will continue his climate policies.
A year ago, it seemed so different: President Obama trumpeted an annual investment of $15bn in clean energy research and development. In the economic stimulus package that followed, billions were pledged to energy research, while the president\'s commitment to climate legislation seemed to promise the framework that would ensure such technologies were deployed. The US seemed determined to avoid following at national level the example of General Motors – a once mighty enterprise that went bankrupt through spending its time and treasure resisting the future instead of owning it.
Today, Obama\'s promising vision is faltering at best; the US risks turning its back on the chance to dominate the next technology revolution, and global efforts to accommodate the administration\'s efforts to put more than a decade of US climate recalcitrance behind it have not met with a corresponding policy delivery from Washington.
US climate debates seem mired in the administration\'s political weakness and the Senate\'s departure from its mission to serve the public interest. This is not just a tragedy for the US. We are all hostage to its climate policy.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ate-change-united-states-obama
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