Since the United States and United Kingdom claim to share a “special relationship,” President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron could learn from each other when trying to convince their parties to pass or approve climate legislation.
At first, the two may seem like opposites based on political backgrounds.
Obama is seen as liberal in the U.S., trying to convince conservatives in Congress, mainly the House of Representatives, to pass clean energy legislation. Strictly climate legislation on national level in the U.S. will not happen for quite some time, but in the meantime, there’s the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate emissions, and Obama is hoping to increase renewable energy with the Clean Energy Standard (CES).
Meanwhile, Cameron is conservative, and has had an easier time gaining support for climate legislation from most parties in the UK, including support for the Green Deal. Cameron also has had more success in regulating greenhouse gas emissions nationally.
However, both lost support when it came down to more intense targets. The U.S. Senate in 2010 was unable to convince 60 senators to vote for climate legislation, with opposing legislators calling it a “job-killing tax.” Some Senate Democrats wouldn’t vote for legislation because the bill also called for increased offshore drilling. This was the same year as the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Cameron was unable to persuade conservative MEPs (Members of European Parliament) to vote in favor of increasing Europe’s carbon emissions reduction target from 20 percent to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and the vote failed in European Parliament.
Both Democratic Senators and Tory MEPs are holding out on tighter emissions reductions until there is a global agreement and until emerging economies are included in a reduction target.
MEP Martin Callanan told the Guardian:
Conservative MEPs have always been skeptical of the EU unilaterally increasing its target to 30 percent without a worldwide agreement. I am in favor of increasing the EU target to 30 percent, or even higher, in the context of a global agreement where our competitor countries take similar action. Increasing our own targets while the rest of the world does nothing will have virtually no measurable effect on global emissions, because it will force large EU emitters to relocate to other countries outside the EU where they will continue to emit at a much lower cost.
In both cases, the “other countries” where they expect jobs to be shipped include China and India. (The irony is that China is well on its way to launching a national carbon market by 2015.)
So, while both Obama and Cameron are vying for support to increase carbon emissions reduction targets, or to introduce climate legislation in the first place, the two might be able to exchange ideas on how to win over reserved legislators.
