Obama team joins global climate talks amid domestic doubts

Mar 28, 2009, 13:04 GMT

Washington - US President Barack Obama's administration will enter the complex world of global climate talks this weekend amid a furious debate back home about whether the United States should be placing limits on the pollutants that cause global warming.

As government negotiators begin a two-week meeting in Bonn, Germany, on Sunday, Obama's team will be pointing to some immediate policy shifts by the administration that environmentalists have hailed as a dramatic change from former president George W Bush.

The government's Environmental Protection Agency this week advised the administration that global warming could already be regulated under existing US clean air laws, and earlier this month said it would require US companies to report on their emissions levels for the first time.

Both moves represent a change of policy from the Bush administration and are being viewed as steps toward one of Obama's key campaign promises: Government-imposed limits on US emissions of greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.

The United States and China are the world's largest polluters, combining for nearly half of all global emissions. Per capita, the United States emits about four times as much as China.

Obama has promised to cut US emissions about 15 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. Many world leaders, including China and others in the developing world, are relying on Obama to make headway on that promise before a global deal can credibly be reached.

Todd Stern, the US State Department's new climate envoy, is leading the US delegation to Bonn, which is the first in a series of meetings to thrash out a new global deal to combat climate change.

Governments are hoping to reach a final agreement by a December summit in Copenhagen. The US never ratified the first global deal - 1997's Kyoto Protocol - which set targets on industrial countries' emissions.

'Bonn really is an opportunity to demonstrate that there no longer is a unilateral disdain of the United Nations global warming negotiating process,' Edward Markey, a Democratic congressman who leads a House of Representatives committee dealing with global warming, told reporters this week.

Whether or not Obama has the power to act on his own, the president has said he will seek approval for his domestic climate plans from the Democratic-led Congress. Markey's committee is expected to produce a first draft bill next week and hopes to put legislation before all members of the House by the end of May.

But tackling climate change is proving a hard sell domestically for Obama as the US economy goes through its deepest recession in decades. US legislators are not expected to pass legislation forcing companies to lower their emissions before the December summit.

The argument in the United States has become less about the merits of tackling climate change itself and more about whether pushing green energy solutions will help or hurt economic growth.

Obama's preferred method to cut emissions is a cap-and-trade programme, a system that already exists in Europe and essentially doles out pollution credits that can be traded between cleaner and dirtier firms.

Opposition Republicans have lambasted the idea as devastating to US growth, and Obama's budget outline released last month indicated he doesn't expect a cap-and-trade plan to be in place until 2012.

'Cap-and-trade is code for increasing taxes, killing American jobs, and raising energy costs for consumers,' John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives said this month.

Whether a bill that reduces climate emissions is eventually approved could depend on some key moderate Republicans. Obama's foe during the 2008 election campaign, Arizona Senator John McCain, is a supporter of cap and trade.

But with many legislators afraid of giving other countries a competitive advantage, success in the US could depend on simultaneous progress internationally. Obama has said he wants to see tough commitments from China, India, and other developing countries that were also left out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Bonn will provide the first opportunity for Obama's team and other countries to flesh out their major disagreements, according to Yvo de Boer, who leads the UN body overseeing the global talks.

Governments 'really do need to get down to serious work, as of now,' de Boer said.