Obama setting climate goals
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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is pledging a provisional target for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the first time in more than a decade that a U.S. administration has offered even a tentative promise to reduce production of climate-altering gases, the White House announced yesterday.
At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Mr. Obama will tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.
The figures reflect targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global warming agreement with binding targets.
Mr. Obama will travel to the U.N. talks to deliver the promise in hopes of spurring significant progress there. He will appear Dec. 9, near the beginning of the 12-day session, on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, officials said.
By making the pledge in an international forum, Mr. Obama is laying a bet that Congress will complete action on a climate bill next year and will be prepared to ratify an international agreement based on the commitment.
But White House officials acknowledged that those outcomes were uncertain. They will depend in large measure on whether the legislation's Democratic sponsors can win 60 votes for a measure that is at the moment unpopular, and whether major developing nations -- notably, China and India -- deliver credible emissions reduction pledges of their own.
Mr. Obama has met over the past two weeks with the leaders of China and India, the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, to discuss climate change and the Copenhagen conference. U.S. officials said both countries told the president that they would be prepared to announce steps to reduce the rate of growth of emissions if the United States put a pledge on the table.
Neither has done so yet, although Chinese officials have hinted that they will announce a near-term target for reducing energy use relative to economic growth, or "carbon intensity," before the Copenhagen conference opens.
"Obviously, we hope other major economies will put forth ambitious action plans of their own," Carol M. Browner, the president's senior adviser for energy and climate change, said at a White House briefing yesterday morning.
Mr. Obama, who had not previously committed either to emissions targets or to going to Copenhagen, has been under pressure from other leaders and environmental advocates to reassert U.S. leadership on climate change.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said Mr. Obama had now raised expectations for the Copenhagen talks, but he expressed a note of disappointment about his visit's timing. He said he hoped that Mr. Obama would come in the final days of negotiations, when dozens of other heads of government were planning to arrive. A White House official said a return trip was "highly unlikely."
It was unclear what effect Mr. Obama's promise of domestic emissions reductions would have on the slow progress of climate legislation through Congress. Until now, the administration's negotiators have said they will not get ahead of Congress in making promises in an international forum. But Mr. Obama has now essentially adopted the targets of a climate and energy bill that passed the House in June.
The House bill aims at greenhouse gas reductions of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and sharper cuts in the following decades, through a cap-and-trade system that includes most of the nation's major sources of carbon dioxide emissions. Last month, a Senate committee passed a measure calling for a 20 percent cut by 2020, but that is expected to be weakened as the legislation moves through other Senate committees and onto the floor, perhaps next spring.
"By putting a serious number for U.S. emission reductions on the table, the president has just called the world's bet and then raised it for our negotiating partners," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., a co-sponsor of the House legislation.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a co-sponsor of the Senate legislation, said he believed the president's actions would give a boost to the Copenhagen talks and help move the Senate bill. He called the decision on a U.S. target a "game changer," domestically and internationally.
"By announcing a provisional target, contingent on the support of Congress, the president has defined a path to an international agreement that challenges the developed and developing nations to fulfill their obligations," he said. "It lays the groundwork for a broad political consensus at Copenhagen that will strip climate obstructionists here at home of their most persistent charge, that the United States shouldn't act if other countries won't join with us."
But Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the Senate's most outspoken skeptic on climate change, said Mr. Obama's public pledge would do little to speed an international agreement. Mr. Inhofe said Senate climate legislation was "dying on the vine," and that the Senate would never ratify a treaty that did not require strong emissions reductions from major developing countries.
"The U.S. Senate has made clear on numerous occasions that unilateral action by the United States is unacceptable, because it will harm our economy and have virtually no effect on climate change," Mr. Inhofe said.
First Published November 26, 2009 12:00 am
