President Obama worked hard and fast last week to let the world know that action on climate change is now a major goal of American foreign policy. But his speeches and exhortations were overshadowed by the increasing probability that the U.S. Senate will not reach a vote on a climate bill before the crucial international conference in December in Copenhagen. As a result, the basic strategy toward a worldwide effort to slow climate change may be changing.
Over the past two years through an enormously complex negotiating process nearly every country on Earth has been preparing a treaty to be adopted at Copenhagen. It would presumably require countries to impose legal limits on their emissions of greenhouse gases, with rich countries providing financial aid to poor ones for necessary technological changes. But the United States never joined the predecessor treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, and many countries would be unwilling to commit themselves at Copenhagen as long as the American position is up in the air.
The alternative that appears to be emerging is a general unwritten agreement that acknowledges the need for rapid action and calls on every country to move as fast as it can by following its own policies to cut carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
President Obama left no doubt where his administration’s intentions lie. At the Climate Change Summit organized by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sept. 22 the president reviewed his administration’s measures so far, the investments in renewable energy, the increase in auto fuel efficiency standards and the rest. “Taken together, these steps represent a historic recognition on behalf of the American people and their government,” he said. “We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act.” Later that day, at a meeting of former President Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative, President Obama said, “Carbon emissions from cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting ice caps and imperiling the planet.”
In his address to the UN General Assembly on the following day, he placed protection of the environment among the primary goals of American foreign policy and pledged “deep cuts” in emissions. Two days later, at the close of the G-20 meeting on the economy, he emphasized the importance an ill-fated agreement to abolish subsidies for fossil fuels.
But listeners were aware that the president was unable to provide much reassurance about how deep those cuts would be, or how fast, or how soon the subsidies would be abolished as long as those issues remained under debate in the Senate.
Meanwhile, in some parts of the world the concept of a coercive treaty is unwelcome. Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister of the environment, said recently, “… if we want durable political consensus, then it has to be rooted in domestic legislation and not in an international agreement.”
In the United States there has developed a substantial body of opinion that the world will make faster progress if governments follow their own initiatives immediately rather waiting until they have drafted a treaty that meets all of their varying circumstances. This position is reflected in an article by Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He concludes: “Most important, the United States should make sure that aggressive bottom-up efforts to actually start cutting emissions, such as a U.S. cap-and-trade system and a sophisticated Brazilian effort to curb deforestation, do not wait for agreement on a comprehensive global deal. That is where the real action is, and there is no time to waste.”
