From Kyoto to Copenhagen: How Obama Can Come Through

U.S. climate negotiators are working around the clock in Copenhagen to reach global consensus on an international arrangement to supplant the Kyoto Protocol. President Obama faces both different and similar constraints and challenges from those that faced the Clinton Administration in 1997 at Kyoto. The political will sufficient to drive U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Protocol was clearly absent 11 years ago, when I was a member of the U.S. delegation.

Politically, that agreement was a nonstarter. It would have bound the United States to cap its greenhouse gas emissions at 6% below 1990 levels while imposing no such obligations on major developing country emitters that were also strong economic competitors. This year, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have acted on legislation that would significantly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. World scientific opinion has coalesced around the need for action, and the American public is more aware of and concerned about climate change.

Still, we don't know what the Senate will do. Some might worry that President Obama is getting out ahead of Congress in Copenhagen. But I think the Obama Administration has learned from the mistakes of Kyoto and is acting pragmatically. I see this reflected in four aspects of the U.S. negotiating position.

First, Obama may support a political statement on Friday, but the only legally binding agreement the U.S. has said it can accept is one that reflects action taken by both houses of Congress. Legislative action must precede significant, binding U.S. agreement in any international forum.

Second, the U.S. believes that any framework agreed to at Copenhagen should be kept flexible. The exact nature of the U.S. climate legislation that will pass, whether next year or later, is unknown. Neither is it known whether such legislation will provide for an economy-wide cap-and-trade regime, a sectoral cap and trade, a carbon tax, a slew of command-and-control measures, or some combination of measures. So the Copenhagen agreement must allow for a range of domestic approaches.

Third, the U.S. seeks to avoid the trap of a "legally binding cap" to which it agreed at Kyoto. There's an important decision between the Kyoto caps--in which countries agreed to penalties if they couldn't deliver--and targets, which are just aspirational. Deep reductions and legally binding caps, whether in an international agreement or domestic legislation, are a difficult commitment to meet. Deep reductions imply substantial increases in carbon prices. Caps require that prices rise to the point at which demand is reduced sufficiently to hit the cap. Without a price collar, the ability to reach international agreement or enact such legislation is problematic. A gradually escalating price collar in domestic legislation, properly set, could anticipate the achievement of certain target levels of emission reduction but is not a legal guarantee.

Fourth, they understand that the climate challenge requires meaningful action by all countries. Any negotiated agreement must have real commitments from major emitting developing countries--even if not the same as those undertaken by developed countries--if it is to be politically acceptable in the United States.

At best, Copenhagen will result in an agreed political statement that is not legally binding. Ideally, such an outcome will include a political commitment to engage in further negotiation to achieve binding outcomes. But it is important to realize that whatever the outcome at Copenhagen, no binding agreement is necessary for all states to move forward cooperatively to address short-lived forcers such as black carbon, ozone, methane, and HFCs. Specifically, a fund for global methane reduction could be instituted in the immediate aftermath of Copenhagen.

Post-Copenhagen, the central priority for the U.S. is to demonstrate the requisite political will to pass domestic legislation with a well-designed economy-wide cap-and-trade system. We already reside in risky climate territory. Earth is warming. Impacts are now becoming visible, and the window is closing on our ability to keep greenhouse gas concentrations at safe levels. Some of those who quite properly are worried demand huge and justified reductions.

But as a political matter, when it comes to action, advocates of CO₂ reductions, including myself, can at times set the bar so high that passage of meaningful legislation becomes daunting, reducing rather than enhancing the prospect of success. This is a major challenge facing President Obama. Politically viable legislation, with the right domestic architecture, is needed now to place the U.S. on the right path.

Finally, our negotiators must keep in mind that any deal will have different requirements for countries at different levels of development, which means there may not be an agreement that can satisfy every critic. Ultimately, the U.S. will act to protect its complex--sometimes conflicting--interests through domestic legislative action that emerges from the political process. Any international agreement on emission reductions can only get the U.S. and its president part of the way toward an energy transition required to protect the planet.

Rafe Pomerance is Senior Fellow of Clean Air-Cool Planet