Obamas Ability to Deliver Climate-change Measure Asked
Obama said in a speech to a United Nations conference on global warming yesterday that “we cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution act together.”
About 190 nations face a deadline to craft a new climate- change agreement at a meeting in December in Copenhagen. Environmental groups and government officials are asking whether Obama can win Senate approval of climate-change legislation the House passed in June. The president and lawmakers remain entangled in debate about overhauling the U.S. health-care system.
“People are waiting to see the signal from the White House about what comes next after health care and how important it is to him to have some momentum going into Copenhagen,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in an interview. “They are starting to get more impatient.”
The House passed legislation that would reduce emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. It would create a cap-and- trade system to limit carbon dioxide emissions tied to global warming and then establish a market for the trading of pollution allowances.
The measure is opposed by most Republicans, and a number of Democrats in the Senate have said they wont support it in its current form. Committee action on cap-and-trade legislation was delayed from early September and hasnt been rescheduled.
Doubts Linger
“Doubts linger on whether the U.S. will pass a bill before the meeting in Copenhagen,” said Neal McAliley, head of the climate change initiative at the New York law firm White & Case LLP.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said yesterday that senators will “push climate as hard and as fast as we can.”
“The failure of the Senate to pass meaningful climate and energy legislation is hampering the presidents ability to make substantive commitments to the global community,” Keya Chatterjee, acting director of the World Wildlife Funds climate program, said in a statement after Obama spoke yesterday. “With the Copenhagen summit convening in just 10 weeks, the Senate has a narrow opportunity for salvaging the reputation of the U.S. abroad.”
The health-care fight has dominated Washingtons attention, said Carol Browner, Obamas top adviser on the environment and energy, in a briefing yesterday for reporters in New York.
“Health care has obviously taken up more time than was originally anticipated,” Browner said.
John Bruton, the European Unions ambassador to the U.S., voiced impatience in an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sept. 17 that the U.S. is preoccupied with health care instead of global warming.
“The rest of the world cannot be expected to sit around the negotiating table in Copenhagen twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the Senate of one country (however big) to deal with other business,” Bruton said.
The administration will make its best case in Copenhagen even if the Senate fails to act by December, Todd Stern, Obamas top climate negotiator, said at the briefing with Browner.
“In the event that theres not domestic legislation done by the time of Copenhagen, we will negotiate with that in mind,” Stern said. “But certainly the most progress we can get would be helpful.”
Kyoto Protocol
Without Senate action, the administration risks a repeat in Copenhagen of what happened during crafting of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which then-President Bill Clinton signed.
The Senate and later President George W. Bush rejected that pact on the grounds it would hurt the economy and because China and other developing countries arent required to cut greenhouse-gas emissions under the accord.