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TechnoratiBarack Obama May Delay Signing up to Copenhagen Climate Change Deal
Barack Obama may be forced to delay signing up to a new international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of the year because of the scale of opposition in the US Congress, it emerged today.
![[Greenpeace-issued photo shows protesters staging a rally in front of the US embassy in Jakarta in mid February. A UN-led conference in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in December is meant to approve a new global warming treaty for the period after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's obligations to cut carbon emissions expire.
(AFP/HO/Greenpeace/File)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/cut_emissions.jpg "cut_emissions.jpg")
Senior figures in the Obama administration have been warning Labour counterparts that the president may need at least another six months to win domestic support for any proposal.
Such a delay could derail the securing of a tough global agreement in time for countries and markets to adopt it before the Kyoto treaty runs out in 2012.
American officials would prefer to have the approval of Congress for any international agreement and fear that if the US signed up without it there would be a serious domestic backlash.
Stephen Byers, co-chairman of the International Climate Change Taskforce, said: "The Copenhagen climate change talks in December will come at a difficult moment. The timing couldn't really be worse for the Obama administration. It is vital that this is recognised by the international community. If need be, we should be prepared to give them more time - not to let them off the hook and escape their responsibilities, but ensure they are politically able to sign up to effective international action which reflects the scale of the challenge we face."
Byers, a former cabinet minister who has close contacts with senior Democrats in the Obama team, added: "The practical reality is that a delay into 2010 will still leave time for a new international structure to be put in place for 2012 to follow from Kyoto. Such a delay would be a price worth paying to bring the United States into the global effort to tackle climate change."
The White House's new chief science adviser, John Holden, was a member of the climate change taskforce and Todd Stern, one of its advisers, is working with Hillary Clinton at the State Department and will lead negotiations for the US in Copenhagen.
Stern has warned it will be a tall order to get congressional approval before Copenhagen.
Obama has committed the US to reducing its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, but scientists and European governments insist deeper cuts are needed. Obama has suggested that the US could compensate with swifter reductions in the years beyond 2020. His recent budget proposal calls for reducing US emissions roughly 80% by 2050 over 2005 levels.
The British government view, including that of the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, is that the Obama administration can and will strike a deal at Copenhagen, but officials in Washington fear America may be running out of time. They have even been looking at whether an agreement would be seen as an international treaty requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress, or whether it could be forced through as a presidential executive order.
But the opposition within America is potentially substantial, and might be hardened if Obama looks like he is presenting Congress with a fait accompli.
There are thought to be as many as 15 Democratic senators who represent "rust-belt" states dependent on coal mining, steel production and heavy manufacturing, all big emitters of carbon.
There have also been suggestions that the cost of any climate change legislation may be higher than the $646bn (£444bn) suggested by the Obama administration.
On Tuesday, Obama recommited himself and America to the principle of a "cap and trade" scheme, but said he would try to introduce a regional scheme that would ensure energy prices did not rise uniformly across America.
Stern would prefer to see the US go to Copenhagen with congressional approval, telling a recent symposium: "The optimum would be [climate] legislation that is signed, sealed and delivered. It has been a long time now that countries have been looking for the United States to lead and take action. I think nothing would give a more powerful signal to other countries in the world than to see a significant, major, mandatory American plan."
27 Comments so far
Show AllThe American people trust that Barack Obama will effectively deal with climate issues.
LONG LIVE PRESIDENT OBAMA!
Obama is a racial-minority individual and does not like racism:
There is bad news about George Herbert Walker Bush.
What if basically all racial-minority people would subscribe to the interpretations that George Herbert Walker Bush committed monstrous, racist, hate crimes while he was the President of the United States?
It will eventually come out: it is only a matter of time.
Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., With the Highest Level of Academic Honors at Graduation, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
(I can type 90 words per minute, and there are thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. And there are thousands of copies in very many countries around the world.)
_________________
‘If only there could be a BAN against invention that bottled up memories like scent so they never faded & they never got stale.’ (Once again, please consider an illustrative analogy: like scent that is held in or restrained or inhibited or suppressed or bottled up.) It came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.
Denying that all life is in peril from environmental catastrofic change is no different than denying rape.
Thomas More,
Not surprisingly, it looks like you find it easier to ignore my question than to answer it. I understand. It's easier to say things if you don't have to back them up with any kind of reasoning, or God forbid, facts.
Peak oil... and collapsing ice sheets in Greenland and Anarctica more than suggests that Obama (and the vicious $ociopathic Bush cronies still embedded in his administration) NOT delay too long on the Copenhagen Climate Change Deal. Humankind (a.k.a.: ewe-man-unkind) has less than 20 earth years left to fix things... or suffer a major extinction event. Oops! Did I say 20 years? I meant to say 3-5 years. After that... it's the road to peridition: 6+ billion dead... and every nation $tate on the planet a distant memory. That includes Israel, the tail that wags the fascist Amerikan dog.
Cities around the nation signed the Kyoto Agreement when Bush would not. We should not wait for Congress, but make it clear the people are ready to sign the new Copenhagen agreement now.
Essential Environmental Priorities For New President
The new presidents's first priority must be to reverse the disastrous Bush environmental policies, and pursue rational reform measures based on legitimate science--as he had pledged. The new stimulus package clearly falls short on vital environmental reforms such as renewable energy.
We have a clear duty to assist the third world nations in their persuit of ecological friendly development, while surviving the conditions resulting from the global warming and pollution for which we bear some responsibility. By allowing further environmental crimes and neglect, and non participation in international efforts to curb warming, our international standing can only further deteriorate.
Man I wish I could slip into sweet sweet denial like you doubting Thomas. I wish I could believe that the atmosphere and oceans were infinite and that the campfires of billions give off no heat or smoke. I wish I could find a website that told me not to worry. Three years of Common Dreams has made me a sad guy.
Carbon cap and trade is a foolish idea as it does nothing but transfer wealth.
Conservation is the answer. Take away the demand, and you take away the carbon. That is only common sense is it not?
AGW is not a proven science at all. As more is being learned about the sun and its effects on climate, cutting edge scientists are worrying about a climate shift similiar to the Maunder Minn again. The oceans have been loosing their heat since 2003, the average global temps have been declining since 1998. The global warming climate people are loosing the arguement daily.
So once again......think conservation! LIVE life with that first and formost in your mind.
Life is too short to think about the long term impact of climate change if any. Your first duty in life is to think about your own prosperity for the present.
Its common sense not to dump poison into the air or rivers.
But I guess the thought that it could lead to a big catastrophe jsut wouldnt be enough to convince everyone, not if they believe a deity will come down and save them, or some inventor will beam them off the planet at the last moment.
Don't wait for leaders. You can have free public transit in your town now for 60 basis points of sales tax. This is not a theory. It is working right now in many towns and cities.
http://freepublictransit.org
I was impressed that 30 years ago Amherst, MA, at rush hour could have an average of one free bus every 60 seconds running down its main street.
In general, fare boxes just encourage various kinds of theft and prevent passengers from hopping on. Busses should be as much a public utility as sewers and electricity.
Oh, no, we mustn't spend any money on this until we have proof--like our cities going underwater, or a string of summers where lots of days go above 110, and we have thunderstorms and hurricanes in January. Of course, given the delay in climate response to given levels of greenhouse gases, by then it will much too late to avert a much more severe situation, perhaps one that eliminates the human race. But you know, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, given the overwhelming evidence that we're much too stupid to be in charge of a high-value planet like this one.
This piece infuriates me. Delay NOW? After ten years of total inaction? When action on climate change is the only difference between Obama and Bush? What makes it worse is realizing that very likely two of the stubborn senators are "mine"--Rockefeller and Byrd. They are mine in the sense that they officially represent West Virginia, where I live. But that doesn't mean they represent mere human people like me--no, they represent the biggest businesses from WV, which are coal companies. That's why "our" governor is in DC right now, to lay down the law to Obama's EPA that they mustn't even think of tightening the regulations on mountaintop removal coal mining, as was hinted at a couple days ago. Maybe "your" senators are better on this issue, if there is not a big oil or coal industry in your state. Instead, they will represent whatever business interests are strongest, or whoever chipped in the most to their campaigns--in Obama's case it was Goldman Sachs, which gives you a hint why he's handling the financial crisis the way he is.
But for what little it's worth, I have not called "my" reps on this because cap and trade is a stupid approach--what we need is a simple carbon tax, with most or all of the revenue raised being rebated on an equal basis to the human people of America. That's what James Hansen recommends. But it won't happen, because humans have no political power these days. Only corporations do, and they are not "like people" as many imagine--they are like machines. They are designed to make money and they will keep doing that until they so impoverish the natural world that humans can't survive. Which makes those humans who enable them by acting as PR people traitors to their own kind...including the little trolls who surf the Net, looking for articles about global warming so they can post denialist talking points, or anyone who takes money to help a corporation fend off the anger of the people it has harmed.
Climate CHANGE you can believe in.
You have exactly the people that would pay for this stupidity except you left out the very poor that this would hurt the most.
Cap and Trade is Fools Gold.
TM: What hole have you been living in the past 25 years? Peeps like you constantly deny the facts. State your evidence and I'll state mine. 500 years ago the earth was flat and was the center of the universe. Gee, what happened to that "fact?" And, what the hell do you mean "this increasingly arrogant Congress?" If anything, you've proven yourself to be THE FOOL by your absolutely arrogant post. I'm so tired of peeps like you who just shoot their mouth off w/o any providing any discourse to this incredible global warming situation that has been building since the middle of the 20th century. Please just stay out of it and let us lead the enlightened way to the survival of humanity, you stupid fool.
Heckuva job, Congress! We need the money for the banks.
Those rust belt Senators need to be taught that there is money in going Green. All you rusty people need to get hopping and push producing Green Machines.
Passing legislation and spending money to solve a problem that is still an unproven theory is a fools errand and another mistake by this increasingly arrogant Congress.
Factually, it is scientifically unproven. If you are a believer fine, but its just a rtheory till there is real proof, not just opinions.
Unproven theory? Sorry, but you'd be hard pressed to find a single mainstream scientist who would agree with that characterization.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/
Or perhaps you get your "science" from a recently deceased fiction writer?
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/crichton-thriller-...
The risks of not acting on the available evidence are too high.
Joe
Nothing is certain in this world. Foreign policy and defense budgets are based mostly on pure conjecture about threats. Cheney used to argue that hundreds of billions of dollars of extra defense spending was justified if it eliminated a threat of one percent of a serious terrorist attack, while he indicated by his actions that one dime of extra cost in response to global warming was unjustified, even if the harm to be prevented would be several orders of magnitude greater than that of a terrorist attack, and the odds of it occurring were well above one percent. Attempts to bamboozle a gullible public through the use of such convoluted logic can only arise from a perception by Mr. Cheney that he could significantly increase his fortune, sooner or later by one means or another, by directing spending to defense but not by addressing global warming.
What kind of proof do you have in mind, Thomas?
If you were sitting in your office at Exxon and a guy walked in and pointed a gun at you, would you assume that there is sufficient evidence that he might want to hurt you, and act on that assumption, or would you wait till he "proves" it? For most people it would be a rhetorical question. What do you think?
Whether fossil fuels are causing climate change is a mute point. There are enough proven rational obvious reasons not to use them such that only a fool or greedy executive would advocate fossil fuel use.
Obvious Reasons ---- They are extremely Poisonous and Noxious
-------------- They destroy the enviornment and all living beings at extraction points
------------ Idiots fight many WARS over them
--------- Their supply is rapidly diminishing
Also...
They are acidifying the ocean.
Their smoke is darkening the sky in some areas.
We have alternatives, if we work on it.
Joe
Sometimes it seems as if the only value the US adds to the world these days is in providing an example of the path not to follow -- the path that leads to self-destruction.