US: November 3, 2008
NEW YORK - Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both tout
plans to slash US greenhouse gas emissions but the winner of next week's
election will face difficulties signing such a law during the next year at
least.
Both candidates are much closer to the global consensus on climate than
President George W. Bush, who pulled the United States out of the
international agreement binding rich countries to cut emissions blamed for
warming the planet.
Obama, whose climate plan is considered the tougher of the two, aims to cut
US output of greenhouse gases by 80 percent from 1990 levels by mid-century.
McCain, one of the earliest supporters of establishing a carbon
cap-and-trade market, wants to cut them by 60 percent from the same base
year.
But worsening US and global economic outlooks probably will divert early
attention of the next president from the environment.
Any major delay in regulating greenhouse gases beyond next year by the
United States, historically the world's largest carbon emitter, could dim
the chances of world's forming a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global
warming in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.
"The primary attention of the next president and new Congress is going to be
on rejuvenating the economy," said Robert Stavins, the director of Harvard
University's program on environmental economics.
"When voters are hurting economically there's going to be much less
political will to put in place policies that will increase costs to
consumers," Stavins said.
A plan to cut emissions, whether a cap-and-trade program, a carbon tax, or
new energy technology, is likely to increase consumer costs, at least in its
first years, he said. That will push back enactment of a bill on cutting
emissions economy-wide from next year to 2010, or even later, he said,
depending on how deep and wide the downturn lasts.
COMPROMISE
Bill Bumpers, an environmental partner at law firm Baker Botts in
Washington, D.C., said climate legislation probably will be introduced in
Congress early next year. Enacting that into law in 2009 will be "very
difficult, but possible," if key compromises are made, he said.
If Obama wins, one compromise could come on how the permits in a
cap-and-trade program are distributed to heavy polluters like oil
refineries, coal-burning power plants and cement makers.
Obama has supported the idea of auctioning all permits to emit greenhouse
gases in a cap-and-trade program to heavy polluters. But Botts, an Obama
supporter, said this plan probably would impose stiff costs on industry that
would be handed down to consumers. He said a less costly way would be to
give allocations to industry at first, then auction them over time.
As industry analyses any climate legislation and sees the costs that would
be imposed on it, it will lobby to tweak it. And that in itself will take
time, Bumpers said.
Another factor that will challenge quick enactment of climate legislation is
the wars the United States is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Elliott
Diringer, an expert on international strategies at the Pew Centre on Global
Climate Change.
Framing climate action as a way to strengthen energy security and give the
economy a jump-start would be the best way for the next president to enact
it quickly, he said. Still, even Diringer believes a comprehensive climate
package would come at the earliest only in 2010.
If the United States takes that long to implement its plan, then at the
meeting in Copenhagen next year, China may resist agreeing to act on
climate, said Harvard's Stavins.
But if the United States at least shows next year it is serious about trying
to move on climate, an interim agreement could be formed in Copenhagen to
bridge the gap between the industrialized and rapidly growing countries,
Diringer said.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio)
Story by Timothy Gardner
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
