by Jim Tankersley
Perhaps nothing illustrates the challenges of government efforts to curb global warming more than the chain of events that unfolded this week on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
In Washington, the Senate environment committee approved sweeping limits to the United States' emissions of the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for climate change - employing a rare procedural tactic to overcome a Republican boycott of the vote - while a separate trio of senators announced progress in efforts to compose a bipartisan energy and climate bill.
Those efforts were meant, in part, to reassure international leaders preparing for a major climate summit in Copenhagen next month that the United States is serious about emissions cuts. Environmentalists welcomed them as such.
But even as the Senate committee prepared to vote, climate negotiators were publicly lowering expectations for the Copenhagen summit - citing, in large part, the United States' inability to pass a climate bill into law before the talks begin.
The bottom line is this: Neither Congress and the Obama administration nor the negotiators appear likely to finish their climate work by the end of the year.
Instead, analysts here and abroad say, it looks like the Copenhagen negotiators will attempt to settle for something less than a legally binding climate treaty. Perhaps, for instance, a political declaration that includes specific, nation-by-nation targets for emissions cuts and a fixed deadline for turning that declaration into a binding treaty.
Negotiators conceded as much in Barcelona this week, as they met for the final time, formally, before Copenhagen.
"I sense that people are getting into a more realistic place about what we can reasonably accomplish in Copenhagen" - largely because of US and how far along the process is - said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who attended the Barcelona meeting.
Or, as Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the United Kingdom's climate security envoy, put it in an interview this week: "It's quite apparent that the very high target we're looking for, the legally binding targets we're looking for in Copenhagen, will elude us. There's still an opportunity for us to get political targets.
"Even the scaled-back goal in Copenhagen could depend on negotiators' read of prospects in the Senate, where the climate bill is stalled behind health care - and perhaps financial regulation overhaul - and still must clear several other committees before Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) brings a final bill to the floor.
The bill's fate rests in the hands of a not-small collection of swing Republicans and Midwest-and-Rust-Belt Democrats, who are working with the White House to see if any climate plan can collect the necessary votes.
Among the issues at play are the depth and speed of the emissions cuts, the support for nuclear power development and whether liberals will consent to increased offshore oil drilling as part of an energy and climate package.
There's also a persistent concern, particularly in manufacturing states, over the potential for U.S. job losses if the United States adopts emissions cuts - and take on higher energy costs as a result - while emerging nations such as China and India do not.
A global climate treaty could assuage those concerns. But Chinese and Indian leaders, among others, are reluctant to sign on without a concrete American commitment.
And by the way, several developing nations have already dismissed as inadequate the proposal that by all accounts is the deepest-emission-cut scenario possible for a U.S. climate bill: 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Those nations could hold up a treaty, too.
Comments
Countdown to global warming denying, flat earth Repugs!!!
5...4....3....2....1....Ding Ding Ding!!!
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Posted by: I wanna be a Republican idiot | November 6, 2009 6:47 PM
Smack! Australian Prime Minister Calls Out US Republican Climate Deniers!
The Prime Minister in of Australia, Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party, just took off the gloves on Climate Change Deniers.
The Prime Minister has had enough of the parallel obstructionism in the US and Australia. His critique doesn't just extend to Australia. He also calls out prominent US Republicans.
In Australia, much like in the United States, the passage of a Climate Change Bill has been contentious. Our centre-left Labor government is trying to pass an emissions trading scheme before Copenhagen, but they have been stalled at every possible opportunity by obstructionists from the Opposition conservatives (the liberal-nations, as well as powerful interests, especially from the Coal industry.
The Labor government has itself already watered down the bill and given very generous concessions to Industry, including temporary free permits to the Coal Industry to help in the transition - much to the anger of green groups and minor green parties.
And yet, the obstructionism continues. Even this very weak, watered down bill has been stalled in the Australian Senate primarily by conservatives.
Kevin Rudd came out swinging. In an address to the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank on US-Australian relations, Kevin Rudd delivered a stinging critique of climate change skeptics, deniers, and other interests - in both Australia and the United States.
A full transcript of the speech can be found here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/the-pms-address-to-the-lowy-institute/story-e6frg6nf-1225795141519
This sort of language that's been missing from the debate - strong, unequivocal language that Republican delay and failure is no longer an option.
Now that the ground has been set in Australia, perhaps it's time for Barack Obama and progressively minded democrats to come out and do the same to the Big Oil loving Republican obstructionists in America.
Posted by: sok | November 6, 2009 6:58 PM
Wingnut climate deniers are knuckle Neanderthals leading us down a path towards extinction.
They are Liars (GOP) and the Dupes of Liars (Drudge, Faux News, Druggy Rush).
The voices of reason and intelligence have been much too polite about the fake science and distortionist bs that has been pumped out by Republican knuckle-draggers over the last two decades.
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Posted by: Vobby Fobby | November 6, 2009 7:08 PM
I see the flatliner math deniers have weighed in. 30 years of global warming on an earth that is 300,000,000 years old.
Maybe the Aussie needs to study a little world history, long before the Empire was shipping its prisioners to his land. He needs to study about a guy named Leif Ericson.
http://www.leifericson.us/
I must of missed the industrial revolution occurring in the 10th century.
Posted by: Terry | November 6, 2009 9:51 PM
Somehow I knew Terry would be the first global warming denying, flat earth goon to stand up and raise his hand on here. ;)
Posted by: I wanna be a Republican idiot | November 6, 2009 11:54 PM
Of course, Big Oil and most of the other International Corporations, do not want to see a united front against air pollution. Why? Corporatists would have to cut their greed in half, and, God forbid, they only had one rib-eye steak, a day !! Where is a good, sharp guillotine, when you need one !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, IL | November 7, 2009 12:09 AM
It is quite an interesting post. It would not be possible to adopts emissions cuts and take on higher energy costs in this phase of recession. This is quite a serious situation.
Posted by: Batteries | November 7, 2009 2:18 AM
The only man-caused "global warming" is the Hot Air spewed by Al Gore and his acolytes.
Posted by: NOT a brain dead Socialist | November 7, 2009 9:01 AM
Somehow I knew Idiot couldn't do basic math or learn history. Just another flatliner with no common sense.
Posted by: Terry | November 7, 2009 10:34 AM
The only people crazier than the climate change deniers are the climate change evangelists and those scientists who are their high priests. Schemes like pumping sulphur into the air (remember acid raid a couple of decades ago anyone - it damaged forests and was caused by sulphur in the air) or minerals in the ocean to encourage algal blooms (algal blooms poisoned a large stretch of the French Atlantic coast this year destroying a good food source and depriving thousands of people of their living) are likely to be more catastrophic than just cutting down on our energy use as much as possible and letting the earth sort itself out. Lovelock has been right all the time you see..
Posted by: Ed Butt | November 7, 2009 3:19 PM
Public support for an agreement in Copenhagen is slipping away for many good reasons. First, the public is awkening to the fact that the science which supports AGW has always been shaky. Second they are slowly awakening to the truth about climate change, it's solution (cap&trade) and the untimate goal of the UN; The UN wants to become our world Government and will control the world by controlling carbon. He who controls carbon, controls everything. If we give up control of carbon, we give up control of our lives. The UN's Cap&Trade carbon trading sytem will give the UN control of carbon. This is an issue whaich must receive national debate, instead it is being slipped under everyone's nose as a fight against AGW. This is deceitful and Rudd is fully aware of all of it.
Posted by: Klem | November 8, 2009 10:36 AM
If Cap & Trade pass you can say bye-bye to a lot more jobs here. If you think not look at the UK and their Cap & Trade. For every so called green job they lost 4 others. Now that is HOPE we can do without.
Posted by: Crooks_In_DC | November 8, 2009 3:35 PM
Django here. Definitely a Wingnut Climate Change (man-made) Deniar.
There is still considerable science that disputes this Load of Crap. It is there for anyone willing to look, and try to understand. For one, U would have to very selectively draw your Systems-Externals envelope to NOT violate the First Law of Thermodynamics in your political driven attempt to prove or support the GW Load of Crap argument.
As I am sure all Liberals and democrats who majored in something that ended in the word “Studies” would know, Thermodynamics Law No. 1 says that: The sum of the changes in Kinetic Energy, Potential Energy, and Internal Energy are equal to Heat minus Work (non-nuclear events). The Energy terms are all state functions which means that they ARE path dependent, which means that the results derived will always depend on the assumptions made with respect to those paths. Those assumptions need to be pretty damn good, and they are not.
IPCC’s models are constantly in flux, from one report to the next. Destroying your own damn Economy based on IPCC’s low envelope of confidence models degenerates into arguments that can only be made by someone on some sort of mind altering substance, or someone named AlGore. This is no damn way to run a train, unless of course, it is the Runaway Train to Hell.
Despite the irrational insanity of it all, the democrats are winning this all-out war on industry and energy. The Chinese and Indians are not this dumb, but apparently Americans are. Nothing says “Sheeple” any louder than the Sheeple that have been sold this Bill of Goods on this GW Load of Crap.
Posted by: Django - N Exile In/Around the 30th Parallel | November 8, 2009 11:14 PM
And why are Liberals so damn impotent? In your war against “Big Oil”, just stop using the damn product. How difficult is that? Liberals / democrats surely produce more useless methane gas and carbon dioxide than any oil company that may still be in business.
Here’s some good news for the koolaid drinking Lilliputians. The GW Load of Crap will make GE much more fearful than “Big Oil”. At some point in time u are going to have to project some of your irrational hatred of all things successful and kind of “big” onto them.
Posted by: Django - N Exile In/Around the 30th Parallel | November 8, 2009 11:41 PM