Obama's losing battle: Chances drop for US climate action

By Chris Cermak Nov 26, 2010, 11:43 GMT

Washington - West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin literally took aim at President Barack Obama's climate policies. In a television ad, he fired a rifle shot at the cap-and-trade legislation that once seemed likely to become law in the United States.

Given that Manchin is a member of Obama's own centre-left Democratic Party, the images from last month's election campaign proved especially awkward. Manchin, then West Virginia governor, was elected on November 2 to the US Senate from the coal-mining state.

Manchin once supported cap and trade, a system where regulators would limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hand out polluting permits that can be traded among companies, effectively putting a price on industrial carbon emissions.

Heeding the concerns of a state that makes its living on fossil fuel, Manchin's turnabout was one of many signs that the idea of cap and trade has become politically toxic in the United States in the last year.

Times have been tough for Obama, who came into office in January 2009 with a promise to make addressing climate change and incentives for renewable energy one of his top policy priorities.

Two years later, Obama's climate policy is very much in limbo, and the United States' credibility has been severely weakened as negotiators head into next week's United Nations climate summit in Cancun, Mexico.

'Many countries are wondering whether the administration will implement the commitments they've made in Copenhagen and whether the president will be showing the guts to really push through his promises made regarding climate change,' said Wendel Trio, who will lead the environmental group Greenpeace's team in Cancun.

At the December 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, Obama pledged a 17-per-cent cut by 2020 in US emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

His government has stood by the commitment, but that 'is not enough to convince either NGOs or governments that that will really happen,' Trio told the German Press Agency dpa. 'There is a gap between what is theoretically possible and what we are seeing happening.'

Climate supporters suffered a number of setbacks this year in the US: domestic legislation failed to pass the Senate; a weak economy has focused voters more on their own pocket books; and congressional elections earlier this month swept in new Republicans who openly question the science underpinning global warming fears.

Opinion polls have shown that only about 5 per cent of Americans rank climate change as a top policy priority. The Pew Research Centre last month found that 59 per cent of Americans believe there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming, while just 34 per cent believe this is mostly because of human activity.

'America seems to be drifting backward,' Nigel Purvis, a former climate official with the US State Department and now a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, wrote in a policy paper. He noted that anti-climate-change policy became a 'defining principle' of the conservative Tea Party movement that gained clout in November's elections.

Todd Stern, the top US climate negotiator, has said that other countries were 'puzzled' by the gains of conservative politicians who question the science behind global warming. He acknowledged this week that their opposition to domestic action could have an 'indirect' effect on his clout in Cancun and beyond.

Still, Obama has powers at his disposal to limit greenhouse gases emissions. All eyes are on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a regulator that has claimed the right to tackle emissions under a 1990 clean air law.

Obama has long said he preferred new congressional legislation on energy, while keeping the EPA's powers in his back pocket. In 2011 the EPA will for the first time begin regulating emissions from power plants and other sources of greenhouse gases. The agency has already improved fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

Lawsuits challenging the EPA's right to regulate emissions are making their way through the courts. Republicans are also considering legislation that would strip the EPA of its powers, but any such effort would likely be vetoed by Obama.

Some US states have begun to take action in the absence of federal legislation. California is set to introduce a cap-and-trade system in 2012. The plan was backed in a referendum on November 2, one of the few bright spots for environmentalists in the US elections.

A study by the World Resources Institute found that the EPA and states together had the power to cut US greenhouse gas emissions about 14 per cent by 2020, if they acted aggressively. That would leave another 3 percentage points to be met by other means.

There are aspects of renewable energy, including nuclear power and electric cars, where Obama can find common ground with Republicans, who will take control of the lower House of Representatives in January.

Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat,' Obama said after November's election defeat. 'It was not the only way.'