World leaders from 192 countries will convene in Copenhagen next week for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). President Barack Obama has promised to attend the conference and has set out definitive emissions-reduction goals. However, a deadlocked U.S. Senate and a cooperation stalemate with China threaten to make any agreement reached in Copenhagen a mere political charade.
This week, White House officials released official greenhouse gas reduction targets — shooting to lower the United States' emission of warming gases "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. These goals are in line with those outlined in the climate change bill that made it through the U.S. House of Representatives this past summer. But the bill is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, and many fear that its passage is unlikely. Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma and a climate-change skeptic, plans to go to the Copenhagen conference to make it clear that Obama's emissions reduction promises are not substantiated with Senate votes. Obama can set ambitious goals, but ultimately his ability to make good on his vows is tied up in the indecisive legislative branch.
Any agreement reached at Copenhagen would be meaningful but not legally binding for the United States. For this reason, the climate talks are at risk of sharing the fate of the UNFCC's 1997 Kyoto meeting. The Kyoto Protocol, the product of that conference, was largely ineffective because major polluters like the United States and China either failed to comply with or were unaffected by its recommendations. Although former President Clinton signed the treaty, Congress would not ratify it and the United States' emissions levels continued to increase. Obama faces the same problem with the Senate and domestic climate legislation.
Many legislators are reluctant to make climate change commitments until other major polluters like China make a similar promise. Senators from both parties have said they will withhold support for the bill until other major polluters make definitive promises to dramatically limit their emissions. China's recently released plan is to reduce "carbon-intensity" (carbon dioxide emissions per unit of economic output) by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, meaning Chinese emissions would probably still be increasing, but at a slowing rate.
China's target is less ambitious than the one put forward by the Obama administration, and is not enough to satisfy those who see U.S. emission targets as contingent on a major commitment from China. As long as both countries continue to make cooperation contingent on one another, emissions targets will be toothless (as in China's case) or politically impossible (as in the United States' case). This conundrum has led both countries to indecision: White House officials have said that a fully binding legal agreement will be postponed until a meeting in Mexico City in December 2010. How committed can the Obama administration be to making real progress at the Copenhagen talks, if it refuses to make a meaningful commitment until a year from now?
Obama has made it clear that he hopes a Copenhagen agreement will have an "immediate operational effect.'' However, without legislation and cooperation from Congress, Obama's promises to the international community in Copenhagen will ring hollow. Obama should use the Copenhagen talks to, first, pressure the Senate into passing domestic climate change legislation and, second, demonstrate to China the political importance of agreeing to more ambitious emission-reduction goals. Without congressional support and Chinese cooperation, the Copenhagen negotiations will be no more than empty promises. Obama must use Copenhagen as a means of putting pressure on reluctant actors, or else both the global climate and the United States' international reputation will suffer.
