U.S. May Not Make CO2-Emissions Pledge, Pershing Says

Citing lack of greenhouse legislation, the US is failing to commit to any substantial cuts in greenhouse emissions. However, Democratic Senators, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have put a bill on the table that requires US polluters to cut greenhouse emissions by 20% by 2020. Though the progress has been slow, there is still hope from all parties that the world is moving forward to legislating greenhouse emissions on a global scale.

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U.S. May Not Make CO2-Emissions Pledge, Pershing Says
Bloomberg.com
by  Daniel Ten Kate and Alex Morales

The U.S. may not agree to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in a new treaty this year because there is no domestic law setting a framework, the country’s top negotiator said at United Nations climate talks in Bangkok. Without legislation advancing in Congress, it will be hard for the world’s biggest economy to pledge a target for itself in a global treaty, U.S. negotiator Jonathan Pershing told reporters today as negotiations wound up in the Thai capital.

“It will be extraordinarily difficult for the U.S. to commit to a specific number in the absence of action from Congress,” Pershing said. “The question is open as to how much we can do. It’s not really possible to answer.”

The UN set a deadline to approve a new treaty to stem global warming by December in Copenhagen. Countries have three weeks of talks left — one in Barcelona next month and two in the Danish capital — to close gaps in an accord to reduce heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide.

The Bangkok talks were marked by a dispute between richer and poorer nations over whether to renew or abandon the Kyoto Protocol, the only existing global agreement to reduce CO2. The Kyoto accord, never ratified by the U.S., gives binding targets to 37 developed nations on greenhouse-gas emissions and penalizes them for exceeding their caps. Countries including Spain, Italy and Japan are headed to miss their targets.

At Bangkok, “some progress” was made, though the negotiating text is still full of “political stumbling
blocks,” said Kim Carstensen, leader of the global climate initiative at the environmental group WWF.

‘No Political Breakthroughs’

“On issues that require political breakthroughs, they’ve not made any real progress,” Carstensen said in a telephone interview from Bangkok. “That means targets, finance, institutions and the legal form of the outcome in Copenhagen.”

At present, pledges by industrialized nations to cut emissions fall short of the 40 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2020 demanded by many developing countries, including China and India. Only Norway has said it will make a 40 percent reduction.

Any U.S. pledge to slash greenhouse gases is dependent on the Senate agreeing to pass climate change legislation. “The U.S. is generally weakened by the fact that it has been unclear how the domestic legislation process has been going,” Carstensen said. “It’s important that a number is put on the table in Copenhagen.”

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