By Alex Morales and Kim Chipman Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — When Barack Obama was elected president, he was heralded as a possible savior for climate- treaty talks that had dragged on for years while George W. Bush rejected limits on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. “America is back” at the United Nations negotiating table, Democratic Senator John Kerry declared after the November election. Danish climate minister Connie Hedegaard said U.S. emissions policy moved forward 35 years overnight. Instead, Obama may send empty-handed envoys in December to the table in Copenhagen where 192 countries will try to assign emissions reductions because Congress has given him no mandate. With the 27-nation European Union, Japan and Australia ready to pledge cuts of more than 20 percent only if other nations follow suit , the stage is set for promises to collapse. “How can we expect other major players to move their position until they know that in the end the U.S. is also going to deliver?” Hedegaard , chairwoman of the UN talks running from Dec. 7-18, said in an interview. The possible domino effect, along with a continuing split between the U.S. and China, erode chances for a strong treaty, negotiators and political scientists say. “It is unlikely that an agreement which would be meaningful is going to be finalized” in the Danish capital, Robert Stavins , director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in an interview. Hour From Copenhagen When Obama picks up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December, he’ll be an hour’s flight from where more than 10,000 envoys, UN officials and lobbyists will be meeting to conclude an agreement on slowing climate change, a challenge the president has said the U.S. will “lead the world” in tackling. Obama hasn’t decided whether to make an appearance, administration officials said. Carol Browner , the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy, said the administration hasn’t given up on getting a bill through the Senate this year, and can point to actions aimed at cutting greenhouse gases, such as proposed tailpipe emissions standards and investments in clean energy. “We feel very, very confident that we can work with the rest of the world to take significant steps forward in Copenhagen,” Browner said in an interview yesterday. Environmentalists say Obama is a likely no-show because stalled climate bills in Congress mean the U.S. may have little to offer, threatening to unravel prospects for a global deal. Getting Ready “If this were a play getting ready to come to Broadway, we would say: ‘Well, we aren’t sure of the financial backing or the orchestra and, guess what, the lead star says he might not sing,’” said Peter Goldmark , director of the climate and air program at New York-based Environmental Defense Fund. There are other stumbling blocks beyond the U.S. Industrialized nations are still split with developing countries such as China, the largest greenhouse-gas producer, over transferring clean-energy technologies to poorer nations and climate-adaptation aid. Yet the heart of a climate deal is to get nations to slash heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming. That was the UN’s principal conclusion in a 2007 declaration made in Bali, Indonesia , that proposed a “road map” for forging a new treaty in Copenhagen two years later. “If the United States comes out with an ambitious target, they’ll inspire others to do the same,” said Sweden’s chief climate negotiator, Anders Turesson , who speaks for the EU because his country holds the bloc’s rotating presidency. 1990 Levels Obama has said he’ll push to cut U.S. emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. The U.S. House passed legislation in June to create a cap-and-trade system that would limit gas emissions and create a market in pollution permits. Today, Senate committee hearings are set to begin in Washington on a comparable measure. Congressional leaders, embroiled for months in the debate over health-care legislation, made no promises that the full Senate will take up the climate bill before 2010. The moderate Democrats and Republicans “we are counting on” to back climate-change legislation are preoccupied with overhauling the U.S. health-care system, said Bob Simon, chief of staff of the Senate Energy Committee. Having no congressional mandate will make it “extraordinarily difficult” to commit to a target in treaty talks, U.S. lead negotiator Jonathan Pershing said Oct. 9 at the last negotiating round in Bangkok. Firm Commitments If the U.S., the second-largest emitter, could deliver, other countries might firm up their commitments, Brice Lalonde , France’s lead negotiator, said in a telephone interview. He pointed to carbon-reduction pledges by many developed nations that are conditional on a deal being reached in Denmark. “Look at all the commitments which are conditioned by ‘if,’” Lalonde said. “Take out all these ifs and we’ve got an agreement.” Only if other nations take similar steps will Japan and Australia cut their emissions 25 percent by 2020, they said. Commitments by New Zealand and Switzerland are also contingent on a wider deal. The EU has pledged a 20 percent greenhouse-gas cut by 2020 from 1990 levels and will ramp that up to 30 percent if comparable action is taken by other developed nations. Developing nations, whose emissions are growing faster than in richer countries, might be motivated to talk about when they can ‘peak’ their greenhouse gases before starting to cut them if they got a clear stance from the U.S., Lalonde said. Industrial Competitors The U.S. climate position avoids giving too much economic leeway to China, a growing industrial competitor that rejects binding emissions targets. China says that as a developing nation the priority is to pull its people out of poverty. The two nations release 40 percent of global emissions. Even so, China President Hu Jintao has said that his country will cut emissions in proportion to economic growth by a “notable” margin by 2020. “It’s fair to say that the Chinese are holding back on putting forth a number in terms of their greenhouse-gas intensity target until they have greater clarity on what the U.S. is going to do,” said Jake Schmidt , international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group. “If the U.S. put forward a number and gave a clear signal of what it would do, I think China would follow minutes after that.” Back Home American negotiators say they don’t want to bring a deal back home to the Senate, the only U.S. body that can ratify a treaty, and get it rejected. Former President Bill Clinton’s UN envoy Peter Burleigh signed the Kyoto Protocol accord in 1998. Neither Bush nor Clinton sent the treaty to the Senate. The 100- member chamber said at the time it would reject an accord that didn’t make requirements of developing nations such as China. “We don’t want to repeat the Kyoto experience of having a number where there’s nothing behind it,” Obama’s climate envoy, Todd Stern , said Oct. 18 in London. By avoiding Kyoto, the world’s biggest energy consumer was allowed to increase emissions by about 16 percent from 1990 through 2007, UN data show. Kyoto demanded a 7 percent reduction from the same base year to the 2008-2012 measurement period. Hostage to Congress “Are we going to be forever hostage to the U.S. Congress?” asked Bernarditas Muller , a negotiator for the Philippines who helps co-ordinate the G77 group, an alliance of 130 developing nations. Just as in the 1990s, Congress is concerned over losing jobs to low-cost economies with no emission rules and members are considering setting duties to be paid on their imports. “The negotiations need to move forward on what we do with leveling the playing field on manufacturing so that a country that acts responsibly on CO2 emissions doesn’t lose jobs to those countries that don’t,” said Senator Sherrod Brown , a Democrat from Ohio. Obama and many world leaders probably will send underlings to the Danish capital instead of traveling themselves as the chance of countries breaking a deadlocks are slim, said Eileen Claussen , head of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. “There is a lot of pressure on the president to go,” Claussen said. “But it’s hard to imagine heads of state going to Copenhagen and ending up with a political declaration that says: ‘It’s really hard and we are going to take another six months to do it.’” Long-Term Targets The U.S. has signed up to some long-term targets, including a commitment by the G8 that developed nations should cut emissions by 80 percent by 2050. In July, the Major Economies Forum, which groups the biggest polluters including the EU, U.S., China and 14 other nations, said they’ll aim to contain average warming since industrialization in the 1800s to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Signing up to such targets means countries need to devise “pathways” on how to get there with targets in the nearer term, according to France’s Lalonde. “It’s easy to say something for 2050 but what’s more important for us is to show how you get there,” Lalonde said, adding that the U.S., which is lagging behind for now in the fight against global warming, has a “treasury of ingenuity” that can help it catch up. “If they’ve been on the moon, they can reduce greenhouse gases,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net . Kim Chipman in Washington at kchipman@bloomberg.net
