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Obama shields US airlines from EU’s carbon scheme

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Published 28 November 2012, updated 09 January 2013

President Barack Obama signed a bill yesterday (27 November) shielding US airlines from paying for each tonne of carbon their planes emit flying into and out of Europe, despite a recent move by Europe to suspend its proposed measure for one year.

The bill was the first piece of legislation debated on the House floor after the US Congress returned from recess on 13 November, and had been cleared by the Senate in September in a rare unanimous vote.

It gives the American transportation secretary the power to shield US airlines from Europe's Emissions Trading System (ETS).

Lawyers have said the bill is an unusual piece legislation because it would prevent US companies from complying with the laws of another country.

"It never made a bit of sense for European governments to tax our citizens for flying over our own airspace - and with the passage of this law we've got the tools we need to prevent it from happening and protect American jobs," said Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, a co-author of the bill.

The House passed the bill despite the announcement on Monday that the European Union would "stop the clock" on enforcing its law for one year.

McCaskill and co-sponsor Republican Senator John Thune said in a statement that their bill had pressured the EU into delaying the enforcement of their cap-and-trade scheme for aviation.

The EU had also been under pressure from China, one of the world's fastest growing markets for aircraft, which had threatened to cancel orders of European Airbus aircraft if the EU did not back down from applying its ETS on all airlines.

One EU official took to the social networking site Twitter to suggest that United States was not making good on suggestions for "greener" policies.

Obama made reference to climate change as one of a trio of issues facing the country in his victory speech after being re-elected on 6 November.

"So far the reelected President Obama climate policies look EXACTLY as in first term. Wonder when we'll see the announced change?" Connie Hedegaard, EU climate action commissioner, said in a tweet.

Positions: 

Jo Leinen, member of the Environment Committee in the European Parliament said:

"It is a bad signal for climate protection that President Obama signed the Anti ETS-bill as one of his first decisions after his re-election. Forbidding US companies to respect EU law is at the same time an arrogant attitude that will boomerang on consensus in other transatlantic negotiations."

EurActiv.com with Reuters

COMMENTS

  • If I ever find the person who slipped this Bill into the President's Christmas Cards "for signing" pile they will really be for it!

    More seriously, we regard this as a pretty nasty and pernicious piece of legislation and are stressing to all our political representatives in both the EC and Member States that as a bloc there is still a firm and unequivocal European negotiating mandate to achieve a target to reduce CO2 emissions from international aviation to 10% below 2005 levels by 2020. As far as we can see, neither the US administration's basket of aviation CO2 control and reduction policies, as advanced at ICAO, let alone the A4A/IATA fantasy wish-list of undisguised "business-as-usual" nonsense, fails to meet this bar by some distance, I'm afraid.

    Today's message to the flat earth society representing US airline interests in particular is: you need to be talking to your ICAO representatives in detail about how the EC target could be met, and why and how the US can now move towards this objective.

    And a closer reading of the Bill might mean less hysterical reactions even from its sponsors. A solution is needed that meets the EU target, otherwise the EU ETS "stopped clock" will start ticking even louder!

    Jeff Gazzard
    Aviation Environment Federation
    LONDON

    By :
    Jeff Gazzard
    - Posted on :
    28/11/2012
  • "and with the passage of this law we've got the tools we need to prevent it from happening and protect American jobs," said Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, a co-author of the bill"

    eh? protect American jobs? How?

    It will be most interesting to watch ICAO fail and see what happens when the clock starts ticking. In the meantime, I hope the mid-west is enjoying its on-going drought, oddly the same region where US energy efficiency policies have least impact.

    By :
    Mike Parr
    - Posted on :
    28/11/2012
  • Indeed, the EU law went too far. The law imposes taxes over sovereign nations without agreement. Countries insisted EU tax within the euro airspace, but was not acceptable to the unelected crats at the EC.

    By :
    John
    - Posted on :
    28/11/2012
  • EU is way over its head if it thinks it can impose its laws on other sovereign nations, no one wants their CO2 control BS . Keep that scam in EU .

    By :
    well
    - Posted on :
    29/11/2012
  • "The law imposes taxes over sovereign nations without agreement"

    No, the law imposes taxes on companies - not nations. Any and all nations (or trading blocks in the case of the EU) unilaterally act to impose taxes, import taxes are a case in point.

    "Unelected crats at the EC" - by definition bureaucrats are not elected & do the bidding of their political masters - in this case the EU member states. So John your point with that last comment was what exactly???

    By :
    Mike Parr
    - Posted on :
    29/11/2012
  • That's the perfect isnhigt in a thread like this.

    By :
    Jiu
    - Posted on :
    06/12/2012
  • That's the perfect isnhigt in a thread like this.

    By :
    Jiu
    - Posted on :
    06/12/2012
  • That's the perfect isnhigt in a thread like this.

    By :
    Jiu
    - Posted on :
    06/12/2012
Background: 

In an effort to tackle aviation's small but fast-growing contribution to climate change, the European Commission issued a legislative proposal in December 2006 to bring it into the EU's Emission Trading System (ETS).

It originally applied to industries and utilities but took effect for airlines on 1 January 2012. It involved imposing a cap on carbon dioxide emissions for all planes arriving or departing from EU airports, while allowing airlines to buy and sell 'pollution credits' on the bloc's carbon market, and so reward low carbon-emitting  aviation.

Non-EU governments and airlines have battled the EU, threatening trade wars and retaliation for European airlines flying to other countries.

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