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US Senate Deals Blow to Global Climate Talks
WASHINGTON - A year and a half after President Barack Obama breathed new life into global talks on a climate treaty, the United States is back in a familiar role -- the holdout.
Like a sinking vessel or a blown oil well, the US Senate's inability to take bold action on climate legislation will be a disaster. Unlike a ship or a single oil well, this disaster will take place on a global scale. (AFP) The Senate's decision Thursday to shelve legislation on climate change is certain to cast a long shadow over December's meeting in Cancun, Mexico that will work on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Obama's Democratic allies acknowledged they lacked votes to approve the first-ever US plan restricting carbon emissions blamed for global warming. The task is unlikely to get easier soon, with Democrats facing tight congressional elections in November.
"This is going to change the mood dramatically in terms of what countries are willing to put on the table in Cancun," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which backs action to curb global warming.
"This will seriously downplay what we can realistically achieve."
Obama vowed to act on climate change when he was elected president, sharply reversing course from his predecessor George W. Bush, who was a sworn foe of the Kyoto Protocol, which he considered biased against wealthier countries.
Obama's climate negotiators enjoyed rousing welcomes when they arrived on the scene -- especially from the European Union, Kyoto's most enthusiastic champion.
The State Department, which leads international negotiations, said the Obama administration still considered climate a "priority" and would engage with other countries and with Congress.
"This is a global challenge and we have to resolve it through global cooperation and joint action by all of the key countries and key emitters. We are one of them," agency spokesman Philip Crowley said.
"And central to our ability to do our part is passing climate and energy legislation."
The clock is ticking on sealing a new treaty, with the Kyoto Protocol's obligations for rich nations to cut emissions expiring at the end of 2012.
Climate talks, including the contentious Copenhagen summit in December, have been plagued by fighting between wealthy and developing nations, which are both looking for clear commitments from the other side.
Major emerging nations have resisted any legally binding requirements to cut emissions and pressed first for industrialized powers to seal their commitments.
"Countries like China and India are not likely to commit to any sort of binding obligation if the US is not part of the discussion, part of the negotiation and makes some similar commitment," said Daniel Fiorino, an expert on environmental politics at American University.
While the United States may be the most visible holdout, other major developed nations have also grappled with controversy on climate change, a major issue ahead of Australia's August 21 elections.
Arabinda Mishra, a climate expert at India's Energy and Resources Institute, said the lack of an international treaty "has a real danger in domestic will" in his country to invest political capital on fighting global warming.
The Obama administration has authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon, potentially offering a way to meet US promises at Copenhagen to curb emissions by 17 percent by 2020 off 2005 levels.
But without Senate action, it would be difficult for the United States to meet another promise -- to contribute, along with the European Union, Japan and other rich nations, to a 100 billion-dollar fund to help poor nations cope with climate change.
Climate legislation was passed by the House of Representatives last year, but Republican lawmakers have strongly opposed it, rejecting Obama's arguments that a green economy would create jobs.
"We're still facing a very weak economy and we're still facing questions on the cost of any meaningful reduction," said Ben Lieberman, an energy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank.
"It's pretty clear that no post-Kyoto treaty is in the making -- certainly not in Cancun, and maybe not ever."
20 Comments so far
Show AllThe article opens with false set up doesn't it?
"Obama breathed new life into climate treaty"
"Breathing new life" takes complete action, Obama just moved his lips.
Very different.
Mr. World Wide Death breathing new life into anything? Give me a f*cking break.
The Senate, a body of already dead rich white old men, whose sole concern is to mummify the entire planet.
"The Senate, a body of already dead rich white old men, whose sole concern is to mummify the entire planet."
Thats good. We would be so much better off by just closing the senate forever. We don't need them. They are the same as the house of lords in merry old England. Get rid of them. The problem of equal representation for the States can be worked out but get rid of the Senate now.
This helps describe why the rich senators, act the way they do. Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress, says this as to why civilizations collapse: “The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.”
So the rich sons of bitches will continue on their mission of the destruction of our lives while they ride things out in their Washington DC bubble.
Sitting in their A/C offices and homes, as their constituents roast in excessive heat caused by climate change, that they refuse to deal with.
They enjoy government supplied offices and have multiple homes, as more and more of their constituents become homeless.
They enjoy lavish dinners, as more and more of their constituents go on food stamps and go hungry.
They enjoy generous government salaries, pensions, and health care, as they deny their constituents extensions on their unemployment benefits.
So yea they are prospering just fine as the environment and populace continue to suffer, just like Mr. Write says they would. Pretty sick ya think?
Second that..and obomber must have enormous blame as well. Spineless amerikan government IS guilty of untold suffering and death from environmental disaster !
In another headline on this site Van Jones says we should "stop blaming Obama." But with this renewed failure to address one of the most serious problems the human civilization has ever faced, we see this cautious, ever-so politically correct president rejecting the role of revolutionary, the "change" president we thought we were voting for.
Just how bad is it? Look at the way Shirley Sherrod, the African-American Department of Agriculture official was treated. The Obama White House ran scared and frantic immediately when the false video clip was aired by the right wing nutters. This pattern is totally familiar. It began the moment Obama took office with his appeals for bipartisanship on meeting the financial crisis. Republicans responded by giving him the finger. Obama encouraged more of the same by obsequiously begging for cooperation on reforming health care. He empowered the right wing nutters who were utterly disgraced by the disaster of Bush II. Obama's continued sucking up to political opportunists gave them credibility they would not have had in the face of a forthright declaration of political war. This is what was needed and the big majority that elected Obama would have supported real change. The final disaster came when he bailed out the "too big to fail" financial monopolies and auto companies. Now it is too late and we must all suffer the consequences: an economic and environmental death spiral.
All true and very well said ! He is the biggest let down. The sooner he is gone the better. There just doesn't seem to be any good people at the top of anything in this Country. If you are a Leader, or Boss of anything in this Country, you are a peice of Shit. The Tea Party will most likely get their Sarah for President and that's it, THE END.
Obomber is a wobbling fool...
They may have just sealed the fate of humankind. We don't have years to wrangle over this. We are already in danger and in the beginnings of visible climatic upheavals. This could be the beginning of the end of homo sapiens sapiens, as well as a large percentage of other species.
"My point is that the most eminent climatologists around are unambiguously asserting that we might be risking transformation to a dead planet."
Exactly, and considering the consequences, how low could the probability of such an event be and still warrant actions that pale next to something like the WW2 effort.
As far as the distinction between ending humanity and ending all other life, there are certainly those who would say, If I'm not alive to have these other life forms in my consciousness, then, for all practical purposes, all other life on earth dies when I die, so who cares? I guess Louis XIV was thinking of the same thing when he said: "Apres moi, le deluge". Also, I suspect a philosophy of this sort lurks behind the Ayn-Rands Objectivism that is so popular among our "business leaders".
"After me, the deluge" indeed!
But frankly, another name is appropriate for such a repugnant and insane philosophy - "Nihilism." If we are going to buy into such a philosophy, then Sartre was right, the only philosophical question is whether to commit suicide.
Hey, we've been maiming, murdering & mutating humans -- time for us to take planet-killing more seriously . . . with Oblunder with his thumbs in his various orifices above & below the waistline figuring out how he's going to spluh-spluh his way through more inspirational idiocies . . .
t_g
G'day from Down Under! The day Obama was elected, we were all so excited - I dare say, all over the world. We were in a restaurant and at the next table there was this middle-aged guy from Chicago, with his wife and two teenage brats. One of the young waiters was a US American boy and he told us the news that Obama is the chosen one.
The bloke from Chicago let out a curse and said: "Obama will raise taxes, he'll wreck business, he'll loose wars and he'll be bad for the environment and for the US". We looked at him, wondering, if he is Greenie, maybe... Well, he said McCain and Palin would've been his choice.
We were so shocked by his answer, forgot to ask him what in his opinion would've made those two better for the environment, the economy or just in general, for the US or for our planet?!
All I see, is the USAmericans are blind to the world's or their own problems. Can't you people see that to stop the wars you keep starting and waging would take a huge burden from the environment? The US military is the bigger fossil-fuel user, the biggest environmental destroyer and the biggest waste-dumper?
Also, if you could just curb your own energy usage and consumerism and waste-producing lifestyle, we would have a better chance of at least slowing down the environmental degradation?
Hi t_g,
I've had the great pleasure of visiting your country/continent several years ago. I still remember the Blue Mountains quite fondly. I've never eaten better Thai food (and I live in Los Angeles, which I thought, had great Thai restaurants) --- I chalked it up to your closer proximity to Indonesia.
That bloke from Chicago is a die-hard, modern-day Republican. The key reason being his stated "fear" that "Obama will raise taxes, he'll wreck business..." This is the mind-set of quite a few Amurikans after 30 years of Reaganomic brainwashing. It has been repeated, ad nauseum, everywhere (if you get your news mostly from TV, i.e. the "mainstream" media). It is a fantasy world where we can lower taxes, and essentially starve government, and still maintain a functioning public infrastructure. When that infrastructure inevitably breaks down, these clowns then claim that this is proof that our gov'mint doesn't work! We must privatize, privatize, privatize. Big business will do a much better "job" of serving the public because of the "secret hand" of the "free market" system of finance.
Ditto wars. We maintain the most highly funded military in the world, and yet, the Amurikan sheeple are still convinced, through fear, that we must take the fight "over there" so they don't come "over here".
The USAns are so manipulated, that they never stop to question the efficacy of either of these fallacies. Analytical thinking is NOT encouraged. Consuming is.
A few of us are waking up to the nightmare, but certainly not fast enough. Some, when truthfully recognizing the awful condition of Empire USA, decide to go back to "sleep" - they enjoy their superficial lifestyles. Some decide to vote for the other party that offers us a "choice" --- only to be confronted with "more of the same" since there IS no choice in American politics. Both parties serve ONE master. Call it the oligarchy, the plutocracy, the kleptocracy or the corporatocracy. And this exists on the Federal, State and local levels. (Hopefully this answers your second 'post' as well....:)
t_g
Hi Old Peculiar, Thank you for the kind words regarding your stay here - yes, we do live in a nice country! I have also enjoyed some places and some people in your country, in fact I made some friends in the US whom I value very high.
I still don't understand, how come in the US people are blind to the obvious: they are being exploited through consumerism, advertisements, (lack of) education, TV and films, the popular media and their general lifestyle. Don't they talk to each other? Is there no community, no forums to went your frustrations?
Why don't you have alternative parties, if you can't reform the two major ones?
t_g
And one more thing: as for those old farts in your Congress: don't you people keep electing them? Well, if you are unhappy with them, stop sending them to Washington! You have a choice to choose the senators, then choose someone you like!
G'Day to you all!
We don't have a choice!
It is very difficult for anyone but the party-anointed candidates to get on the ballot in most US states. Elections are just like Kabuki theatre, but not nearly so sophisticated. In most cases, the Democrats are only slightly less reactionary versions of Republicans. If Richard Nixon tried to run today, he would be considered unelectably leftist, and wouldn't even have a chance of being on the ballot.
Your new PM - an Atheist and with an unmarried partner would not have ever gotten on even a small-town or county council here in the US.
You apparently have not ever been to the US, haven't you?
t_g
My son has a masters degree from Brown University, Providence, RI.
We have visited him regularly, but we've never lived there.
Julia Gillard was not elected as PM, but the party room tossed out Kevin Rudd in a ballot and we were told one evening, that there'll be a "leadership spill" and the next morning we watched the morning news and there was Julia as the new PM.
CARBON REDUCTION--NO OPTIONS
Prime blame for the Senate blockage of these vital measures lies not with the senators themselves--but instead with the voters who have allowed those corperate stooges to remain in office.
Through extensive lobbying and fabricated science, the energy cartels have impeded progress in carbon reduction, as well as safety regulations. Their alligations that such measures would cripple our economy has been their classic claim for decades.
In reality, carbon reduction can only improve our economy. There are no reasons why we cannot expeditiously employ our idle work force and assembly plants here to fabricate wind turbines, solar panels, etc--rather than outsourcing this work as is the current trend. Even if subsidies were required to keep the work here, their costs would be eclipsed by the resulting benefits in employment, our security, and our environment.
Our planet cannot sustain its billions of inhabitants undercurrent trends. As the nation most responsible for global warming, we have a mandated duty to reduce our wasteful contributions of these toxins, which can only increase the divide between nations most responsible for warming and those most harmed by it.
The good thing about a green economy, is that in the future you might still have an economy to talk about.
The economy depends entirely apon the environment for resources. The health of the environment depends on the climate and biosphere. About 1 billion people can be supported on a healthy planet. Maybe a million people on a very sick planet, if we are lucky.