Major Emitters Meet in D.C. to Discuss Climate Change
When Bush brought together 13 major polluters to talk climate, did he want to save the polar bears or undermine the Kyoto process? (Wiki Commons - Public Domain and Ng Swan Ti/Oxfam)
With very little publicity, President Obama has relaunched a George W. Bush initiative by gathering delegates from 17 of the largest polluting economies for a climate meeting in D.C.
Late in George W.’s second term there was a slight but perceptible thaw in the administration’s stance on climate change. Bush signed an international declaration that climate change was a problem that must be addressed, and he committed the United States, in a non-binding sort of way, to cutting emissions by some 50 percent by 2050.
Bush also initiated a set of talks among the major greenhouse gas emitters on strategies to lower global emissions through technological cooperation and possibly emission targets. At the time, the Bush initiative was heartily criticized by much of the environmental community and others who suspected the president of trying to circumvent (perhaps sabotage) international negotiations being carried under the Kyoto process.
Working With the Big Emitters Is a Good Strategy
While it is difficult to gauge the former president’s motives, I found that Bush’s initiative had merit, at least in principle. Collectively, 13 nations — the Group of 8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus five of the developing world’s largest emerging economies (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) — are responsible for about 70 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. It would probably be easier to reach agreement among those 13 to curb their emissions rather than among the 120 or so nations involved in the post-Kyoto process.
And whether or not Bush intended it to be so, an agreement that placed the emissions of the 13 under a declining cap between now and 2050 would likely keep the globe on a path to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate change. (For more details see this policy brief I co-wrote: "G8 Leadership is Critical to Curbing Energy-Related CO2 Emissions" [pdf].) So why not get those nations together in a sit-down to see what can be hammered out?
Anyway, good idea or not, the Bush initiative quickly fizzled — there were a few meetings but no substantive progress.
Obama's Meeting Aims to Help Secure Post-Kyoto Plan
Given the Bush legacy, it was somewhat surprising when Obama announced in March that he was essentially resurrecting the Bush initiative. Obama's Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate is convening delegates from 17 major economies — Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States — at the State Department yesterday and today in a closed-door meeting.
According to a State Department press release, “The Forum is intended to facilitate a candid dialogue among major developed and developing economies, help generate the political leadership necessary to achieve a successful outcome at the December UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, and advance the exploration of concrete initiatives and joint ventures that increase the supply of clean energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”
It is noteworthy that the statement made it very clear that the forum is intended to contribute to rather than circumvent the post-Kyoto process, thus distancing itself from the suspicions surrounding the Bush initiative. Along the same lines, “Denmark, in its capacity as the President of the December 2009 Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the United Nations, have also been invited to participate in this dialogue.”
The meeting is not open to the press, so we don’t know exactly what is being said, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s opening remarks have been posted. I found her statements with regard to Obama’s continued commitment to national cap and trade of interest here.
Presumably a final communiqué on the forum will be released later today. (If so, we'll add the link.) Let’s see what they come up with.
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Update: Here's a transcript and video of a special briefing at the Washington Foreign Press Center on the meeting, given by Todd Stern, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman. This followed the end of the first session of this week's dialog and explains further the aims of the meetings.
