MISSING the BEAR

Obama’s on to something: No, actually, it isn’t America’s job to lead.

Bill McKibben at 350.org, David Waskow at the Guardian, Matthew McDermott at Treehugger.com, indeed a broad swath of the green media are Missing the Bear by criticizing Obama for “failing to step up and lead” at Climate Week at the UN. (Lord Stern, to his credit, has it right.) As an economic empire in sunset and politically limited in its domestic sphere with what it can do about climate change, Obama’s step away from leadership is (surprising from an American President) right and proper.


He said:

“But make no mistake: this cannot be solely America's endeavor. Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone. We have sought - in word and deed - a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

Full text from HuffPo

He also said:

“Those wealthy nations that did so much to damage the environment in the 20th century must accept our obligation to lead. But responsibility does not end there. While we must acknowledge the need for differentiated responses, any effort to curb carbon emissions must include the fast-growing carbon emitters who can do more to reduce their air pollution without inhibiting growth. And any effort that fails to help the poorest nations both adapt to the problems that climate change has already wrought - and travel a path of clean development - will not work.”

Full text from HuffPo

The “fast-growing carbon emitters” to which Obama is referring are China and India (and Brazil and South Africa). Helping the poorest nations that will suffer first and most quickly from climate change is a duty that will fall not only to “developed” countries but also to China as it innovates clean technology. Obama isn’t considering China like a developing country here, he’s calling China developed.

The pre-circulated draft text (from the NYT) supports this:

“We must also energize our efforts to put other developing nations – especially the poorest and most vulnerable – on a path to sustainable growth. These nations do not have the same resources to combat climate change as countries like the United States or China do, but they have the most immediate stake in a solution.”

Though this passage wasn’t used as such and any reference to China as a developed country was not made in the speech Obama actually gave at the UN, he knows what he’s on about. China will surpass the US as the global economic powerhouse by 2035. India will as well, by 2045.*

China is already leading the way on green technology according to a report by the Climate Group. President Hu Jintao has vowed that China will generate 15% of it’s power from renewable energy by 2020 and will plant a forest “the size of Norway.” Nicholas Stern recently said that China’s current carbon footprint is probably higher than estimated: the economically more productive provinces already have carbon footprints higher than France and Britain.

Rest assured if there is any country that “gets” climate change, it’s China. And any criticism leveled at China for not making exact commitments in the run up to Copenhagen is highly unfounded, as is any leveled at “uncooperative” India. (India is more likely being sly like a fox.) Both countries will need green technology intellectual property rights and trade negotiations to go their way. China and India have the wherewithal to dominate the global economy in the near future. This will happen. The question is how quickly-- this is what’s at risk in the Copenhagen negotiations.

What Obama has done is acknowledge the role the next economic superpowers will play on the world stage and the waning of American superspower. China already wields a great deal of soft power and is poised to wield a great deal more in the future. Like other global economic powers it has begun to guarantee its future food security by buying up land in Africa. Reforming the global financial system will be impossible without China, especially because global growth will be determined by consumption and savings in China and India (leaving the issue of growth as a strategy aside here). But China (likewise India) has a lot of soft power to gain by developing as cleanly as possible, soft power it will be able to wield in the future with both the old developed world (Europe and the US) and with the developing world. The period in which it will set the example is now until 2050 at the latest, when both economies will overtake the US as the global economic leader.

The upshots are these: The developing world can be pressed to cooperate on climate change based on the extent to which emerging markets cooperate. China and India have a real chance to set an example for developing countries to grow clean and green. And later, spread economic benefits through green tech proliferation.

China can hold the US to account for cutting its carbon intensity: The US is currently bogged down in the domestic politics of climate change. It’s doubtful legislation for adequate emissions cuts will pass the Senate. John Kerry said this summer that it’s doubtful any Cop15 agreement will be ratified by the Senate. Healthcare is easily perceived by both the public and the administration as a more pressing concern than climate change and odds are that ballsy climate change legislation is where the administration will sacrifice in favor of its health care plans. China can wield soft power in the future to pressure the US do what it should about climate change. Mentioning China the way the Obama administration did in the pre-circulated draft may indicate that the Obama administration is counting on this external pressure later to take a second run at stronger domestic climate change legislation and even make certain the Cop15 agreement is passed.

For the future, the US isn’t the country that needs to lead the world on climate change. The West should stop looking to the US to lead and acknowledge, as Obama has done, that for a green clean future it’s up to China and India to show the way.

Update, 17.58pm 24 Sep, 2009: as it turns out I may not be very far off the mark on China's ability to help the Obama administration exert pressure on the Senate to pass climate legislation. I just read this article on Climateprogress.org.

"The bottom line, though, is that it is getting harder and harder for Senators to hide behind China as a reason for US inaction. Quite the reverse. It is increasingly clear that absent passage of the clean energy and climate bill, we have little chance of competing with China and, at the same time, we are pretty much the last hold out for serious global action. If we get a bill, we will get an international deal."


*Granted this estimate is from Goldman Sachs in 2007, pre-financial meltdown, but it’s reasonable to expect that all the crisis has done is put off Chinese and Indian global economic dominance by a few years.

Barack Obama is failing miserably on his promises reduce America’s carbon footprint. On Friday, Bloomberg News reported that Senator John Kerry said that the Senate will likely pass a Climate Change Bill that “puts America on track” to reducing carbon emissions but will likely fail to ratify an international Climate Change treaty. In other words, Copenhagen has been compromised.

Kerry’s admission that the US probably can’t ratify any treaty that comes out of Copenhagen compromises the summit in three ways: it reduces the ability of any country to negotiate for future emissions reductions that are high enough to be effective to prevent run-away climate change, it preemptively reduces the level of carbon emissions reductions that any country will commit to, it undermines any effort at making fast-growing emerging markets promise to improve carbon efficiency at a high enough level, and it reduces the responsibility of participating states to abide by any treaty agreed at Copenhagen. Without the world’s largest carbon emitter completely on board, there is no hope.

But hooray for America for passing the Waxman-Markey bill which legislates 17% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 on a 2005 baseline! Show the world the way forward, show the world how important it is to reduce carbon emissions and come to an agreement at Copenhagen to prevent runaway climate change! Way to go! Even though the UK has legislated a 34% and the EU a 20% reduction by 2020, both from a 1990 baseline. Despite the difference in baseline, the US is still the largest carbon emitter in either 1990 or 2005. Nice effort America. Way to lead Mr. President.

Kerry’s statement makes the passage of a toothless Climate Change bill, the Waxman-Markey Bill, by the US House of Representatives last week that much worse. The bill stripped the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) of it’s ability to regulate coal power thereby not preventing coal-fired power stations from being built in the future. The bill promises not to examine the environmental impacts of biofuels (which on net do not emit less carbon than fossil fuels when you take into account the production process; I won’t even mention price distortions biofuels cause in global commodities markets). The bill does not require the agriculture industry (including meat industry) to assess it's carbon emissions; instead it includes provisions that allow for big agriculture to make windfall profits from carbon offsets and drive out small family farthers (sustainable agriculture, I think not). According to the US director of Greenpeace Phil Radford, “The Renewable Energy Standard requires less new clean energy than we would have without this bill passing.” He also cited scientific evidence that US carbon emissions would have to be reduced 20-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 in order to prevent “catastrophic climate impacts.” The Waxman-Markey bill only provides for a 4-7% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020. Proponents of the bill like Joseph Romm from the conservative think tank Center for American Progress told Yale Environment 360 that the Waxman-Markey bill is compatible with preventing a 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures; last week scientists in the UK declared that 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures is guaranteed.

The bill also establishes an EU like emissions trading system which looks primed to repeat the mistakes the EU system has made. Namely by handing out some carbon permits for free, which according to WWF allowed for 6-15 billion Euros in windfall profits in the UK and 14-34 billion Euros in Germany, “providing a free allocation… does reduce the incentives provided by the scheme to invest in low emissions generation technology.” Issuing free permits coupled with over-issue of permits means that carbon per tonne is ridiculously underpriced in the EU ETS scheme. Free permits means the market price for carbon is distorted, the Carbon Trust’s chief economist Michael Grubb told Reuters recently. Granted, free permits in the US scheme will be “regulated” by state agencies such that any increase in the price of energy is felt by energy companies rather than consumers. This method should induce investment in efficient technology, but will simultaneously fail to induce consumers to use less energy. It isn’t enough that technologies become more efficient, people will have to learn to consume differently, to consume less in order to prevent runaway climate change.

It was the president's responsibility to lead on Climate Change, not just the US but the international community as well. His ability to lead at Copenhagen is now compromised. Sorry sir, but you've Missed the Bear, again.