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US lacks bargaining chips at Cancun climate talks

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-12-02 17:38

CANCUN, Mexico - The new political landscape emerging from US midterm elections has almost killed any likelihood that a climate bill could be passed over the next two years and substantially hampered the White House's efforts on the issue.

That means US climate negotiators at the Cancun talks, being held from November 29 to December 10, lack the bargaining chips to demand that rapidly developing countries agree to binding emissions cuts.

CAP-AND-TRADE BILL IN LIMBO

A year ago, US negotiators headed to Copenhagen touting the success of a House-passed climate bill. But the atmosphere is hard now.

As Republicans took over the House of the Representatives and increased presence in the Senate, the so-called cap-and-trade bill that narrowly passed the House in June 2009, is definitely in limbo.

The bill, now stalled in the Senate, looks more jeopardized on the Capitol Hill where over 100 freshmen Republican lawmakers will be seated as the new Congress convenes in January.

An investigation by progressive blog ThinkProgress has found 50 percent of these new lawmakers deny the existence of manmade climate change, with 86 percent of them opposing any climate change legislation.

Moreover, House Republican leader John Boehner, set to be the next speaker of the lower congressional chamber, has said in public that the climate change theory is "almost comical."

Obama, who made climate change bill a priority of his agenda, is fully aware of the prospect.

"It's doubtful that you could get the votes to pass that through the House this year, or next year, or the year after," he told a press conference after the midterm elections.

Outside the United States, global climate change negotiations could also feel the chill from the outcome of the midterm elections.

"On the international front, the election results ... will make progress toward international cooperation in the upcoming Cancun meetings, already difficult, even more problematic," Katherine Sierra, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent article.

FOREIGN AID IN DOUBT

For the last two years, Washington has dangled the promise of financial help for the poorest countries in climate diplomacy.

In Copenhagen last year, developed countries agreed to the fast start finance commitment, namely to provide funding for developing countries, particularly vulnerable ones approaching $30 billion over a three-year period from 2010 to 2012. This is the one element of the Copenhagen Accord that the US has treated as unconditional, according to US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern.

The Obama administration had assumed that a plan to cap US greenhouse gases and allow emitters to trade carbon allowances would help funnel millions to developing countries for climate projects such as preserving tropical forests. Now that approach is politically dead. And even the administration's ability to provide direct climate assistance to poor nations over the next two years is in doubt, as a looming budget battle with Republicans could freeze US foreign aid at this year's levels, if not cut it.

"Foreign aid, though, is at the top of the hit list for spending hawks in the new Congress," Michael Levi, a senior fellow on energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a blog in mid-November.

EMISSION PLEDGE IN CORNER

The United States, which never joined the Kyoto pact, has reiterated its emissions cut pledge made last year in Copenhagen. Obama pledged then that the United States, which over history had emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country, would cut the pollution about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

"The President has made clear and we have made clear that the United States is standing behind the pledge that we made last year ..." Stern told a press briefing on November 22. "There are different ways to skin the cat."

However, negotiators from developing countries asked the Obama administration to provide a more detailed accounting on how it would hit the target.

According to Stern, the US has done "significant things" to control carbon dioxide emission. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has put in place the "most aggressive" vehicle standards ever.

But the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, touted by Obama as a key tool to fulfill his promise under the Copenhagen Accord, will be challenged by Republicans in a new Congress.

The GOP has already locked the EPA as a target for some time and will certainly ramp up their fight to restrict the agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

According to analysis by the US media, after midterm elections there appear to be at least 57 votes in the Senate for a measure to delay the EPA's climate rules. That is 10 more votes than a similar measure had in June, when 47 senators supported a proposal by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to strip the EPA of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Though Obama could veto such a measure, Republicans are still able to stop EPA regulation by explicitly blocking the EPA's funding to administer such regulations.

In sum, US negotiators would find it difficult to reassure other countries that the US is serious about addressing climate change and moving to a low-carbon future. And of course, the US inaction on climate will definitely weigh heavily on Cancun talks.