Earlier this week, things were looking as good as they have in months for a global climate deal in Copenhagen. The Times of India reported on a leaked letter from Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh suggesting India reshape its positions and break with the G-77 developing country negotiating bloc—including on the critical issue of the future of the Kyoto Protocol. That came after President Hu Jintao pledged China would reduce its “carbon intensity” a notable margin by 2020, for the first time linking its objectives to climate change instead of just energy security. In addition, two of the world’s top-five emitters recently announced new targets or expanded on existing pledges to cut emissions—Brazil committing to an 80 percent reduction by 2020 from deforestation in the Amazon and Indonesia pledging to reach 26% below business-as-usual overall by 2020.
But then came the backpedalling. Ramesh’s suggestions were quickly squashed and China and India announced that they were in lockstep for Copenhagen, committed to refusing the developed world’s efforts to impose “binding” “carbon caps” and protecting the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States and EU are trying to “kill”. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s (ENRC) allocation hearing on Wednesday—a critical domestic issue but completely unrelated—was clouded by one member prominently highlighting this refusal, and arguing that the United States should wait to impose a carbon cap until they come around.
There’s just one problem—no one is demanding that developing countries take on binding carbon caps like those Kyoto imposes on other developed nations and emerging legislation would place on the United States. This developing country rhetoric is a straw man argument in the purest sense. This is not the Copenhagen agreement that the United States is advocating, with support and similar proposals from many other developed and developing nations.
In this agreement, developing nations such as China, India, Brazil and Indonesia would be required to implement a law along the lines of the “American Clean Energy Leadership Act” (ACELA) passed by the Senate ENRC in June 2009. These laws would include some quantitative objectives such as renewable energy mandates, or in the case of tropical forest countries reductions in deforestation rates, and bend the emissions curve in a substantial way below business-as-usual projections. Developing nations would pledge internationally to implement this policy (in some sort of international “registry” or “schedule”), and open up their books to international scrutiny of progress (“measurement, reporting and verification”).
Developed countries, meanwhile, would be subject to the same international commitment and scrutiny, but unlike developing countries their pledge must include a cap on carbon emissions. So to make the international deal work, the United States needs a policy that not only bends the emissions curve with clean energy, it caps emissions outright (something like ACELA + CEJAP (the Senate draft “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act”), or a policy that includes both like ACES (the House-passed “American Clean Energy and Security Act”).
This is the fundamental Copenhagen deal that is emerging: China, India and other large developing countries commit to ACELA-like policies; the United States, E.U., Japan and other developed countries commit to ACELA + CEJAP (or ACES). Down the road as per-capita emissions, gross domestic product and energy consumption begin to converge; all countries would be required to adopt a cap.
This difference is not trivial, and no doubt will still cause hand-wringing in the United States both on passing the cap and ratifying the agreement. But the Chinese straw man reveals an important insight—the fully equivalent Byrd-Hagel deal is not out there now, and will not be for another 15-20 years. However, as large developing countries learned in Bangkok, neither is the extension of Kyoto that absolves them of binding commitments or international scrutiny. Despite cries of bait-and-switch, the “death” of Kyoto has been the writing on the wall for years and was surely a surprise-in-rhetoric only.
The compromise for both sides is clear, and the stakes could not be higher. The question is; will they take the deal?
Andrew Stevenson is a research assistant at Resources for the Future and regular contributor to Common Tragedies.
