Elliot Diringer on Climate Change

Remarks of Elliot Diringer, Pew Center

Global Climate Change After September 11: American Foreign Policy and the Multilateral Agenda November 14, 2001

A few weeks ago, I was in London for a conference at Chatham House on climate change. The title of the conference was "Delivering Kyoto: Can Europe Do It?" It was three weeks after the attacks of September 11 and I had debated whether to go. But I was glad I did, because as an American, being there, and the conversations I had there, really drove home to me some of the complexities and contradictions of my country's role in a world of growing interdependence.

On the one hand, it was truly comforting to hear such expressions of sympathy and support - to know that others not only felt for us, but stood with us. What I found more awkward, though, was the hopeful expectation voiced by many that our sudden interest in coalition-building would somehow translate to a less unilateralist approach on climate change. I felt I had no choice but to try to disabuse them of that notion. For while I believe that a global challenge like climate change absolutely demands a global response, I have no expectation little that this Administration is prepared to seriously engage other nations on this issue. Nor, at this point, do I believe it should try. The rest of the world should push ahead with the Kyoto Protocol. After last week's agreement in Marrakech, the prospects look good. But the best thing the United States can do right now is to stay out of the international process, and start getting its act together at home.

How is it that we've come to the point where it makes sense for the United States - the world's largest greenhouse gas polluter - to take a unilateralist approach to a quintessentially global challenge? In a narrow sense, the reasons for the United States' rejection of Kyoto stem almost entirely from interest group politics. The Bush administration - without closely analyzing Kyoto and the history behind it, without putting any real thought to alternatives, and without anticipating the international furor it would invite - ditched Kyoto to reward certain of its favored constituencies. But in a broader sense, it's also possible to understand the Bush stance as part of a necessary readjustment. It was an abrupt about-face where I think a more measured course correction might have sufficed. But nonetheless, some kind of readjustment was needed because there was a fundamental disconnect in U.S. climate policy. Simply put, the United States was in no way prepared to deliver at home what it had promised abroad. The president made that abundantly clear. The challenge now is finding a way to close the gap.

America's isolation on climate change is somewhat remarkable given its historic leadership on global environmental issues generally and climate change in particular. The United States, for instance, was the prime mover behind creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the expert panel that has laid out the scientific case for addressing climate change in three exhaustive assessments that have grown successively stronger. And Kyoto itself is very much a product of American handiwork. Fundamental features of the protocol, including its reliance on market-based mechanisms like emissions trading, came largely at the insistence of the United States.

But the United States has left other imprints on the climate regime - ones that made clear from the start how difficult it would be to get the U.S. to act against climate change. You may recall the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Its most notable achievement was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agreement that underlies Kyoto. George Bush the elder refused to attend the summit, however, until he was assured that other nations would not insist on firm targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That is why the Convention instead set only a "voluntary" aim of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. By the time the Convention entered into force, it was clear to all that the aim would not be met. So the parties launched the process that ultimately led to Kyoto.

Up to that point, there had been a rough symmetry between America's domestic and foreign policy approaches to climate change - negotiate voluntary aims abroad, and launch voluntary programs at home. But with the new round of talks, the disconnect began to emerge. On the one hand, the Clinton Administration had learned very quickly that mandatory domestic action, in the form of a BTU tax, was not an easy sell - even with a Democratic majority in Congress. Yet, in the talks leading up to Kyoto, it was the United States that proposed that any new international targets be legally binding.

The Administration also consented to a negotiating mandate that said developing countries would not be asked to take on obligations at the same time developed countries would. This was not only an equitable approach but fully in keeping with the principles established by the Framework Convention, which had been signed by President Bush and ratified by the Senate. But this fundamental bargain struck in the international arena was very cleverly exploited in the domestic arena by those who opposed mandatory action against climate change. Shortly before Kyoto, with barely a word of protest from the Administration, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution, which, among other things, insisted that developing countries take on commitments at the same time developed countries did. The so-called Byrd-Hagel resolution was utterly at odds with the mandate framing the international negotiations. It deemed Kyoto virtually unratifiable even before it had been negotiated.

The Administration not only was not deterred - Vice President Gore intervened personally in Kyoto to help cut the deal. The resulting agreement was essentially a grand bargain between the United States and the European Union. The U.S. got emissions trading and a series of other provisions aimed at cutting costs by making the regime more flexible. In exchange, it agreed to take on a tough target - cutting emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, or roughly 30 percent below where they were headed under business as usual. It was an ambitious target under the best of circumstances. But the Administration never even put forward the kind of domestic strategy that would have been required to meet it. Now facing a hostile Republican Congress, it instead found itself struggling to fend off budget riders aimed at undoing even voluntary emissions reduction programs on the theory that they amounted to "backdoor implementation" of the unratified Kyoto. There simply was no domestic program, or domestic will, to meet the tough binding target the U.S. had negotiated abroad.

That was the context for the climate talks last fall in The Hague that were to produce the detailed rules for implementing Kyoto so countries could then move on to ratification. The U.S., rather than attempt to directly renegotiate its target, tried an indirect approach, seeking huge credit for the carbon soaked up by its forests. The Europeans balked. The talks failed. And Kyoto was suddenly on the verge of collapse. Then George Bush became president.

It's quite plausible that, under these new circumstances, other countries would have been more willing to meet U.S. concerns - at least with respect to its unrealistic Kyoto target. The necessary readjustment might have been achieved while keeping the United States in the regime. But the administration foreclosed that option without really even considering it. Far from killing Kyoto, though, the move actually helped rescue it. Other nations rallied around the treaty. Compromises were cut and new agreements reached, first in Bonn last July, then last week in Marrakech.

The administration's anti-Kyoto stance had a similar galvanizing effect on Capitol Hill. Suddenly there emerged a bipartisan urge to demonstrate that some people in Washington do take climate change seriously. In a unanimous vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged the administration to get back to the negotiating table with the aim of securing a binding climate agreement. Democrat Bobby Byrd and Republican Ted Stevens teamed up on a bill giving the White House a year to come up with a comprehensive climate strategy. Jim Jeffords, having single-handedly shifted the balance of the power in the Senate, made cutting pollution from power plants his top priority. And another bipartisan duo, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, said they'd soon draft legislation to establish an economy-wide emissions trading system. Prospects seemed better than ever for building the kind of consensus needed to launch genuine efforts to begin cutting U.S. emissions. And a few years down the road, once the U.S. had demonstrated its commitment was real, the U.S. and international regimes could then be merged into a truly global framework.

That was the outlook before September 11. The events of that day and the last two months no doubt have slowed the momentum for domestic action on climate change. But there are signs it will continue to build, and the approach of next year's mid-term election could help accelerate it. On the other hand, this momentum could evaporate altogether if the economy gets worse instead of better.

On the international front, I do share the hope of the people I met in London that, in the long term, the events of September 11 will give rise to a new spirit of multilateralism across the full range of issues confronting the global community. But I believe that at this moment, on this issue, the United States can best serve the collective interest by staying home and getting its own house in order. Thank you.