It is all but inconceivable that Obama can deliver the 67 votes in the Senate needed to ratify a global climate treaty -- no matter what happens in the 12 months between Poznań and Copenhagen. And the only thing worse than no global climate treaty in 2009 is a treaty that Obama can't get ratified.
Yes, Democrats have expanded their majority in the Senate, edging closer and closer to the magical 60 votes needed to stop filibusters. But the conservatives in Congress are stuck in 1985 (1885?), unwilling or unable to acknowledge the now painfully obvious reality of global warming or the remarkable advances that have been made in clean technologies.
Conservative Senators lined up as a solid block against the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner climate bill (see "Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us"). Worse, the GOP seems to think that among all the losing issues they pushed in their historic drubbing at the polls, their "drill baby drill" message was actually a winner. As one post-election story put it
But several prominent party officials said they believe the GOP's message is fundamentally sound when it comes to energy policy, pointing to that issue as one of the few political bright spots in recent years.
Again, that was not from an article by The Onion.
The GOP has apparently borrowed their motto from Talleyrand's comment on the dying French aristocracy, "They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing." As I noted in "Notes from the conservative stagnation, Part 10," Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, "suggested that some calls to update conservatism -- by taking global warming more seriously, for instance -- were essentially disguised calls to move the party to the left." He added, "They will be cheerfully ignored." Denial is bliss.
Every major conservative think tank remains fervently blind to reality (see, for instance, "The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism: Heritage even opposes energy efficiency" and "The American Enterprise Institute: Still crazy with denial and delay"). The major conservative pundits are equally blinkered (see "Krauthammer, Part 2: The real reason conservatives don't believe in climate science" and "George Will nails the difference between conservatives and progressives").
So we can expect the vast majority of GOP Senators to keep beating the drums that any cap-and-trade bill -- domestic or international -- will raise energy prices and ruin the economy. We can expect repetitions of lines from the Senate debate last summer:
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.: "The vast majority of scientists do not believe that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a major contributor to climate change." Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: This bill means "people must turn off air-conditioning in the summer." Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.: "This bill will attack citizens at the pump" and "increase job losses." Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.: This bill will "leave us less competitive in the world marketplace." Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.: This bill "could bankrupt U.S. air carriers." Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.: "Nobody in their right mind" believes we can get half our power from wind and solar or drive a "fleet of golf carts."
Note that these attacks can be trotted out whether we are in a recession and energy prices are low or if we have recovered economically and energy prices are rising again.
So even if there are 60 Senate votes to override a right-wing filibuster against a strong domestic climate bill, there aren't 67 votes for a new climate treaty. And that means the UNFCCC process as we now know it is essentially a Dead Man Walking, even if nobody knows it yet.
Obama needs to think very hard about whether he is making promises he can't keep. International negotiators are now in Poland to figure out how to create a follow on to the Kyoto protocol in Copengagen next December (see "Will Poznań be a good COP, a bad COP or just another COP out?").
Last month, Obama gave a surprise post-election climate address in which he directly said to delegates around the world headed to Poland that "your work is vital to the planet":
And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.
We do need a new era of global cooperation on climate change. But Obama will need all of his eloquence and smarts -- and that of his new exceptional Secretary of State -- to figure out how to replace the UNFCCC process with something more viable. And he needs to think hard about the value of "engaging vigorously" in the negotiations of a global treaty he can't ratify.
The prize we must keep our eyes on, however, is not any particular process but a particular outcome -- keeping total planetary warming to under 2°C warming from preindustrial levels. How Obama might pursue that Herculean challenge on the international stage outside of the UNFCCC process will be the focus of Part Two.
City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks
15 people worth watching in Copenhagen (a slideshow!)
Is Bill McKibben right to be angry with Obama?
Comments
View as Flat
Luddhunter2 Posted 3:08 am
02 Dec 2008
These suffering people stagger through the day, lurching from making nonsensical dogmatic pronouncements of doom and wrathful condemnation of greenphemers, to public masturbation in front of lilac bushes.
We propose to sedate and detain these people in a humane and dignified manner, and create special habitats for them, where fake news stories of mass utopian conversion to an idyllic nativism are piped in through televisions, and the guests are free to pleasure themselves in a lush meadow of flora to their heart's content.
Please donate to this worthy cause at HabitatsforTerraflagraphobes.org.
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JMG Posted 3:26 am
02 Dec 2008
How about Obama have Hilary help negotiate the strongest possible treaty that actually seems likely to solve the physical problem on the ground at the pace dictated by the physics (which are bad and getting worse) and then present it to the Senate and then, if they don't pass it, he's got a golden issue for getting more Democrats elected.
What is it that Democrats drink that dissolves the spine this way?
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Billhook Posted 5:28 am
02 Dec 2008
Nor have you stipulated what global trade penalties would be levied under that treaty against signatories failing to ratify & comply within an agreed period . . .
Nor have you stated just how many Americans must be killed, or farmers made bankrupt, or cities destroyed, by unprecedented weather events before the GOP senators realize that obstructing global mitigation is truly lousy politics . . .
As for your suggestion that President Obama is going to "have to figure out how to replace the UNFCCC process with something more viable",
I think you're overlooking the fact that it is the US (a signatory of UNFCCC) that is disfunctional in its participation, not the UNFCCC process.
For example, as you'll know, the US has yet to honour its formal undertaking in signing the Berlin Mandate.
It would seem you've little regard for the president'elect's judgement in this matter - but again, you've yet to explain why this is so.
Are you able to make such judgments because you are privy to his intended negotiating strategy ?
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Go Green Tiger Posted 7:01 am
02 Dec 2008
First of all, a huge delay of this in Congress will hurt every incumbent in 2 years. That election will feature more GOP senate seats then Democrats, several of those seats are not as safe as they once were to a mistake in energy policy. (which could hurt Dems just as much.)
So when you look at the GOP who are up for election, you should see several who can ill afford to stand in the way of Climate policy. Some GOP senators from blue and swings states, and the Maverick himself, can and will step up to the plate on this one and get it passed.
Just like JMG said, you can't concede this before the session has even started.
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Darrell Posted 8:31 am
02 Dec 2008
It would point us in the necessary direction and move us forward, treaty or not.
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:49 am
02 Dec 2008
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Billhook Posted 10:40 am
02 Dec 2008
What Darrel proposes is no more than the US honouring that undertaking, albeit belatedly.
Developing countries would be quite within their rights to demand that compliance before entering any further negotiation - after all, Bush reneged on the Kyoto protocol (the instrument of those primary cuts) quite brazenly.
Despite this record of US bad faith, it appears that there may now be the conditions for an effective treaty to be agreed.
As I've understood the backstop US position since the mid-'90s, the revenues from traded emission rights received by Developing nations should be ring-fenced primarily to mitigation projects, (such as Jon R. remarks: "helping China & India move from coal to wind)
with a more recent relaxation of this requirement to include a measure of adaption projects.
To imply that national action is good enough for now, i.e. that the global treaty is less than pre-requisite to decellerating the rate of climate destabilization,
and is thus less than supremely urgent,
is to fail to appreciate just how far behind the curve of emerging threats are the "officially-acceptable" warnings of IPCC AR4.
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Jon Rynn Posted 10:58 am
02 Dec 2008
Governments agreed at a UN meeting in Bali last December that an initiative known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) should be included in the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Since then, private sector involvement has increased dramatically.
Redd provides payments in the form of carbon credits to encourage forests to be saved.
Eric Bettelheim, chairman of Sustainable Forestry Management, a company that conserves and manages forests, says the attractions are simple. "It's at the middle-to-low end of the cost curve, so investors can generate returns and do good from relatively low-hanging fruit," he says.
I don't know, maybe it's not quite what it's cracked up to be, but it's another idea. I think we should be bouncing around a bunch of ideas.
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wesrolley Posted 1:56 pm
02 Dec 2008
DiPeso's view of the Future of the Republican Party does not contain Rush Limbaugh.
"More of the same, only harder, is a ticket to permanent minority status. For many young citizens in particular, the Republican Party will be a hard sell unless there is much more substance to its thinking about the environment than talk radio harangues about "enviro-wackos."
Appealing to the young will require a return to old principles. Conservatism is not about looking out for number one in an all-consuming pursuit of material gain. It's about stewardship of what conservative theorist Russell Kirk called "the permanent things" in life, including the environment that underpins our civilization and graces our lives with beauty."
We ought to be sitting down with DiPeso and finding the votes we need.
Wes Rolley
CoChair - EcoAction Committee
Green Party US
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Colin Wright Posted 2:03 pm
02 Dec 2008
His arch-enemies, the "bad boys of environmentalism" have a piece in Common Dreams with their prescription:So what should greens, progressives, and Democrats do in this difficult political and economic climate? While carbon pricing and pollution trading may be dead, the prospects for serious public investment in our energy economy and infrastructure are better than they have been in a generation.
Though I don't believe in waiting for "breakthroughs" or killing environmentalism, I do think N&S are on the right track here. And if Obama gets some serious reductions in carbon going with such a program, all the easier to get a CO2 reduction agreement through the Senate in the coming years.
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