Experts: EU should temper hopes for US climate push

Supporters of EU efforts to tackle climate change may be relieved that Barack Obama and John McCain both support a cap-and-trade scheme to curb US greenhouse gas emissions, but American support for a global climate deal is not certain, analysts warn.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are set to face off on Tuesday 4 November in one of the most hotly anticipated US presidential elections in a generation. 

Both candidates have made more ambitious climate and energy policies a centrepiece of their campaigns, raising expectations that the US will assume greater leadership on ‘green’ issues in contrast to George W. Bush’s administration, which has been widely criticised for rolling back a range of environmental protection measures and for blocking progress towards an international climate change deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol. 

But there is a need for “expectation management” in Europe with respect to the climate change agenda of the next US presidency and the chances of a global deal, says Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, senior director for policy programmes at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC.

The financial crisis and economic recession are likely to lead to a re-alignment of each candidate’s priorities, says Kleine-Brockhoff. While Obama has mentioned tackling climate change as part of the measures he intends to implement to reinvigorate the economy, McCain has not, he points out.

Beyond the priorities of each candidate, mere timetable constraints are also likely to act as a drag on US – and international – climate efforts.

Global talks on a successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol are to be finalised during a major UN climate change summit in December 2009 in Copenhagen. But it is “unlikely” that the US will be able to push through its own climate change bill before that deadline, given the time required for US lawmakers to scrutinise legislative proposals, says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington, DC. 

The China conundrum

Whether  or not the US arrives in Copenhagen with its own climate bill in place is important with respect to the negotiating position of rapidly developing states, notably China and India, who are not expected to sign up to any sort of binding global climate deal unless developed countries arrive in Copenhagen with their own domestic commitments already in place.

But the US has made it clear that it will not sign off on a global deal without some form of binding commitment to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by developing states, raising concerns that the Copenhagen talks will be deadlocked as China and the US, the world’s biggest emitters of GHGs, face off on climate action. 

China’s willingness to sign up to binding action to cut emissions, whether through percentage-based reduction targets, sectoral industry agreements or other schemes, is also seen as a key driver of US domestic action on climate change.

Lieberman-Warner, round two?

In terms of the details of US domestic action to cut GHG emissions, it is unlikely that the US Congress and Senate will sign off on anything more ambitious than the 2007 bi-partisan American Climate Security Act, proposed by US Senators Joe Lieberman (Independent Democrat, Connecticut) and John Warner (Republican, Virginia), Kleine-Brockhoff told EURACTIV.

The act, which proposes an EU-style cap-and-trade system for curbing CO2 emissions, was shot down by a narrow margin in the US Senate in June this year. 

A similar proposal could pass through the US legislative machine the next time around, since, with George W. Bush out of office, neither Obama nor McCain are expected to veto the bill once they take the office of president. Both candidates claimed to support an emissions trading system in their campaign pledges, with Obama calling for a more ambitious reduction target (80% less GHGs by 2050) than McCain, who wants to slash emissions by 60% by 2050. For his part, Obama has also expressed a greater willingness than McCain to sign the US up to an international climate deal.

Democrats, who are seen as being more favourable to a cap-and-trade scheme, are also expected to occupy between six and ten more Senate seats following the 4 November ‘Super Tuesday’ elections, when American citizens will vote not only for their next president but also for their senators, congressmen and governors (in many states). This would bring the number of Democratic senators close to 60 out of a total 100, close to the two-thirds majority required to pass legislation.

But passing such a bill will depend on more than the political balance in the Senate, whose representatives remain just as wary as they did in 1997 about committing US industries to reducing GHG emissions without binding commitments from China and other developing countries. 

“The China question remains just as big” as it did a decade ago, says Kleine-Brockhoff.

Curing the oil addiction

Beyond emissions trading and international climate action, Obama and McCain appear to see eye-to-eye on the need to free America from its strong dependence on imported oil, notably from the Middle East. 

But the candidates have significantly different visions on how the US can achieve greater energy independence and security.

While McCain favours a patchwork of measures to diversify the country’s energy supply, including more nuclear power stations and an increase in domestic oil and gas output, Obama is calling for a “complete transformation” of the US economy and industry, spurred on by a $150 billion package to drive the uptake of renewable energies.

The following table provides a comparison of the candidates’ energy policy visions: 

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