The Road to Copenhagen: An Update

Europe and China both came out this week asking the U.S. to do more than what is in their landmark climate change bill. As countries around the world prepare for the Copenhagen summit where global powers are poised to make pivotal agreements around goals and standards for dealing with climate change, the major powers and emissions producers are clamoring for position and relevance. Politics are by no means reserved to the halls of Washington, and long gone is the time when Washington and the U.S. could think of itself as an island in the midst of the climate change debate. The idea of not participating in the effort to battle the global environmental problems or of not coming out of Copenhagen as part of the agreement the way we did with Kyoto is unacceptable.

Major players like the U.S., China, Europe and Russia are making moves on their own and having words with each other along the way. So far the basic pattern is that the U.S. is playing catch-up legislatively, and walking the precarious tight rope line between what is good for the environment and what is good for the economy. Europe continues to set the tone and in some ways the standard for climate change action, with China taking much of its direction and approach from the EU. Russia, well, Russia is basically ignoring any sense of responsibility and hiding behind their 1990 emissions numbers from when they were part of the horribly destructive USSR. So be it. All the world’s a stage and the countries and habitats merely players, perhaps.

The U.S. currently has a climate change bill in Congress that has cleared the House of Representatives and is trying to garner enough votes to weave its way through the senate. Additionally, the Obama administration has indicated this week that it wants to approve California’s desire to set its own tail-pipe emissions standards. The Federal government had previously been against this idea, wanting the regulatory decisions to come from Washington, not states.

The EU recently offered to reduce greenhouse gases by 30 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. The U.S. offered to reduce their 1990 emissions by 4%. And so Europe is pissed. The EU sees its offer/pledge as a motivational standard that other nations should use to gauge their own pledges.

“We expect more, we demand more,” said Andreas Calgren, Swedish minister of the environment. “We need the right global targets and objectives for the long term in line with science,” he said, adding that such targets were needed to apply “the right pressure to make sure we have sufficient emissions reductions.”Stavros Dimas, the E.U. commissioner for environment and becoming a large voice in Europe’s efforts to push rich countries toward meaningful cuts in emissions, has said that we may need a global pledge to limit the rise of the global temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius to keep from “runaway climate change.”

Apparently this spring American negotiators blocked European efforts to pledge to limit the Earth’s temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius- this is apparently a sticking point, numbers and pledges and, as follows, responsibility to deliver.

Li Gao, a division director with the Climate Change Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, says the U.S. is not living up to their responsibilities with the low numbers set by the climate change bill."The emission target, if converted to a 1990 baseline, is only about 4 percent by 2020," Li said. "This is far away from what China and the Group of 77 developing countries have requested of (developed countries)."

Developing countries have asked developed countries to pledge greenhouse gas reductions of 25-40% by 2020 from 1990 levels. The EU is within this, the U.S. is not. And Li believes that many other countries will take a card from the American deck for negotiations.

"Instead of aiming high, some developed countries will follow suit and push for lower targets," Li said.If historical politics are any guide, we can see some kind of compromise being made, and if the U.S. is starting at a mere 4%, that may put us somewhere in the area of 10-15%. 6 months or so until Copenhagen and the arguments have begun in earnest.