WASHINGTON
(AP) — President Barack Obama is trying to negotiate a legacy-making
climate change pact this coming week in Paris with one hand tied behind
his back. Congress can’t even agree whether global warming is real.
Scientists
point to the global agreement, years in the making, as the last, best
hope for averting the worst effects of global warming. Obama has spent
months prodding other countries to make ambitious carbon-cutting pledges
to the agreement, which he hopes will become the framework for
countries to tackle the climate issue long beyond the end of his
presidency in early 2017.
But
Republicans have tried to undermine the president by sowing uncertainty
about whether the U.S. will make good on its promises. Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other GOP leaders have warned other
countries not to trust any deal Obama may strike; other GOP allies are
working to nullify Obama’s emissions-cutting steps at home.
“America
is extremely divided, and there doesn’t seem to be any prospect that’s
going to change at least in the next year or two,” Gov. Jerry Brown,
D-Calif., who is attending the talks, said in an interview. “America’s
leadership is not as great as it should be given the recalcitrance and
the continuing obstructionism of the opposition party.”
About
150 heads of state are set to join Obama for talks on Monday and
Tuesday as the deal nears the finish line. The goal is to secure
worldwide cuts to emissions of heat-trapping gases to limit the rise of
global temperatures to about another 2 degrees from now.
With
little room for error, leaders have tried to avoid the pitfalls that
undercut global climate negotiations in the past — specifically, those
in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 1990s and in Denmark during Obama’s first
term.
The
deal in Kyoto — which the U.S. never ratified — spared developing
countries such as China and India from mandatory emissions cuts, causing
resentment in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. The Paris
agreement would be the first to involve all countries.
In Copenhagen in 2009, leaders managed only to produce a broad-strokes agreement that fell far short of intended goals.
The
concept behind a Paris pact is that the 170 or so nations already have
filed their plans. They would then promise to fulfill their commitments
in a separate arrangement to avoid the need for ratification by the
Republican-run Senate. That dual-level agreement could be considered
part of a 1992 treaty already approved by the Senate, said Nigel Purvis,
an environmental negotiator in the Clinton and George W. Bush
administrations.
But it’s not just about whether or not to ratify.
In
the United States, the talks are entangled in the debate about whether
humans really are contributing to climate change, and what, if anything,
policymakers should do about it. Almost all Republicans, along with
some Democrats, oppose the steps Obama has taken to curb greenhouse gas
emissions, arguing they will hurt the economy, shutter coal plants and
eliminate jobs in power-producing states.
Half
the states are suing the administration to try to block Obama’s
unprecedented regulations to cut power plant emissions by roughly
one-third by 2030. These states say Obama has exceeded his authority and
is misusing the decades-old Clean Air Act. If their lawsuit succeeds,
Obama would be hard-pressed to deliver the 26 percent to 28 percent cut
in overall U.S. emissions by 2030 that he has promised as America’s
contribution.
Opponents
also are trying to gut the power plant rules through a rarely used
legislative maneuver that already has passed the Senate. A House vote is
expected while international negotiators are in Paris.
Senate
Republicans are working to block Obama’s request for the first
installment of a $ 3 billion pledge to a U.N. fund to help countries
adapt to climate change, a priority for poorer countries. What’s more,
the Republicans running for president are unanimous in their opposition
to Obama’s power plant rules; many say that if elected, they immediately
would rip up the rules.
“In
the end, we will not get to climate safety without the legislative
branch participating,” said Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who heads
Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
Obama’s
aides say commitments from China to curb emissions show that developing
nations are finally on board. Republicans had argued that U.S. action
would be irrelevant as long as major emitters such as China were still
polluting, while India and other developing countries tried to hide
behind China’s inaction and said they bore less responsibility because
they historically have emitted less than the U.S.
The
Obama administration mostly has acted through executive power:
proposing the carbon dioxide limits on power plants, which mostly affect
coal-fired plants; putting limits on methane emissions; and ratcheting
up fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which also cuts down
on carbon pollution.
All
of that is ambitious and serious, but probably not enough, said
Jennifer Morgan of the nongovernmental organization World Resources
Institute.
“There
are players in the United States that want to hold on to the current
energy system that we have,” such as oil and coal companies, Morgan
said. “They tend to be quite powerful in our system.”
The
White House says Obama plans to highlight how developing countries are
stepping up when he meets on the sidelines of the Paris talks with
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Obama also expects to talk with the leaders of island nations at risk
from rising seas and warmer temperatures.
___
Follow Josh Lederman at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP and Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears
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