Cap and Trade, Not in the First 100 Days
November 10th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
From Greenwire today (subscription):
On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to reduce U.S. emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020, with a midcentury 80 percent cut. Yet Obama has not stated a timetable for actually moving global warming legislation to implement those goals, and congressional leaders are likely to hold off in pushing the issue until all of the complex details have been worked out.
“It’s not a first 100 days priority,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said today of cap-and-trade legislation. “It’ll take longer to come together.”
President-elect Obama also received support for delaying U.S. action until after the 2009 Copenhagen meeting from Yvo de Boer of the UN FCCC:
In 1997, de Boer said negotiators did not have their own laws in place as they crafted the emission limits spelled out during talks in Kyoto, Japan.
“I can’t think of a single country that signed up in Kyoto that also had its implementation plan done,” de Boer said. “All the industrialized countries that signed up to targets in Kyoto then went and developed their national policy package and submitted the package for approval in conjunction with a ratification proposal. I don’t see why we should have a much more difficult standard for the United States.”
The United States stands out as the only major industrialized country not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. But U.S. leaders have avoided Kyoto for good reason.
In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 on a critical resolution that essentially blocked President Clinton from getting ratification of an agreement that did not include binding commitments from developing economies. Bush also held the Kyoto Protocol back from the Senate, though his move prompted a much louder international outcry because he also opposed setting mandatory limits on U.S. emissions.
De Boer said some diplomats know what to expect out of the United States based on the struggles over Kyoto.
“It’s possible to sign an agreement in Copenhagen, then develop the domestic policy package and then put both to the Senate for approval,” de Boer said. “The Senate will say, ‘If you guys signed up for this, you need to show us how you’re going to get there.’”
He added, “The lesson to learn from Kyoto is not to sign something in Copenhagen that you know the U.S. Senate is not going to ratify.”
These comments signal that what would likely be a vicious, perhaps politically damaging, fight over cap and trade will be avoided until after the 2009 Copenhagen meeting. Delaying U.S. action makes good political sense for both the Obama Administration and the international negotiations over climate change. However, those wanting dramatic domestic action are bound to be disappointed.
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November 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
More details in E&E News PM:
“Legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is President-elect Barack Obama’s next priority after restoring the U.S. economy, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) said today.
“This is number two on the priority list as reported to me,” Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, told an audience of analysts at the Edison Electric Institute Financial Conference. “Carbon dioxide controls are coming. The debate is over,” he said.
Boucher said he expects the House to take up a bill to place a cap on carbon dioxide emissions by late spring or early summer, followed by similar action in the Senate in late summer or early fall. That would provide an “outline” for negotiations scheduled for next December in Copenhagen, Denmark, on a new climate change agreement for reduction targets to be met by 2020 and 2050. Legislation need not be signed into law by the Copenhagen meetings, however, Boucher added.”
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2008/11/10/1