Guest Post: The Road from Kyoto to Copenhagen Runs Through the U.S. Senate

This is a guest post from Thomas Kirlin of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. The Center is partnering with the Council on Competitiveness for the National Energy Summit this September.

No news here: the road to Copenhagen runs through the U.S. Senate, as it did 12 years ago when the Conference of Parties readied itself for Kyoto. And the road is just as bumpy. A dozen years ago Senator Byrd and Senator Hagel introduced a Senate resolution instructing U.S. negotiators not to support an international climate protocol if terms were inequitable, unenforceable or would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy.

The Byrd-Hagel resolution passed 97-0, a stark contrast to the Waxman-Markey bill, which narrowly cleared the House by seven votes, 219-212, back in June. Lost in translation—and time—is the memory that, in 1997, many Senators believed that they were not so much opposing reasonable action on greenhouse gas emissions as upholding the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by President George H. W. Bush and ratified by the U.S. Senate, signatories of the 1992 UNFCCC pledged to stabilize emissions at a level that would not interrupt food supply, would enable the ecology sufficient time to adapt to climate change and would ensure sustainable economic development, regardless of whether one lived in a developing or developed nation.

Today, meteorological and political climates have changed noticeably. The old truths still make dramatic evening footage: building homes too near cliffs and oceans, or up tornado alley or down a coastal hurricane corridor is unwise. However, these old truths now are amplified by new meteorological facts, creating political will and a sense of urgency. Regardless of geography, increasingly many are convinced that that we face more (and more severe) rain, drought, heat and cold spells, and their attendant impacts on forest fires, food supply, housing and disease. Human populations and human activities do affect climate through cumulative greenhouse gas emissions—just as surely as concerted political effort has moved the political class to action.

This said, Earth is not a thermostat spinning in space with mankind’s hand firmly grasping a glowing dial. We never will control global temperatures, only emissions that affect temperature.

The Senate’s task, therefore, is more modest, I believe, than the recent House bill suggests. That bill cut a broad but shallow swath across the challenges facing us, whether defined as reliable (clean) energy supplies, climate change, affordable energy, increased energy security or green economic growth.  Hopefully the Senate will focus on a few structural issues, including the impact of its decisions on markets, all industries—clean and fossil—and, equally important, the impact of federal decisions on federal coffers. Regrettably, to gain a seven vote margin of victory, House leaders gave away 85% of the $676 billion dollars in revenue from emission allocations that the President and many others hoped could be used to sustain government investment in clean energy, increased domestic production and a smarter grid, not to mention health care reform and a promised tax break. Today, innovators are left with the one-off stimulus package that can start the train rolling, but relies heavily on the private sector to get to the next station. However, current economic signs are mixed at best for investors, regardless of their inclination to pay for new capacity in solar, wind, nuclear, electric cars, or whatever.

Given these challenging times, the Council on Competitiveness has perfectly timed its Energy Summit and International Dialogue for September 23-24^th. During what will be extremely difficult Senate, Executive and perhaps lingering House debate on the best way forward, these events will gather domestic and international leaders to clarify the difficult paths before us, and, more specifically, again confront members of the U.S. Senate.

— Thomas M. Kirlin

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