(Cross posted from the Cascade Climate Network COP15 blog)
As a final assignment for a climate course that I am in, I had the opportunity to write a memo to President Obama outlining what his climate goal should be and what policies/strategies he would use to reach those goals.

Below is the full text. I think it does a good job of explaining where we are at with the current COP15 negotiations and where we are headed with a climate bill.
_____________________

To: President Barack Obama
From: Mr. Jeremy Blanchard
Date: 7 Dec 2009
Subject: Climate Change Policy Recommendations

As a young person in the United States, I feel an obligation to ensure a healthy, prosperous future for my children and for all future generations. Because of this, I have spent the last year organizing campuses and communities to take action on the largest challenge that our species has ever faced: global climate change. To avoid catastrophic climate change, the United States must take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously revitalizing our economy with clean, safe energy. To achieve this goal, the country must pass ambitious climate legislation and negotiate a strong international climate treaty. Mr. President, you must lead the way to ensure that these goals are met. The strategic recommendations outlined here are meant to be ambitious yet still politically realistic.

Climate change is unlike any problem that we have ever faced before. The problem is distributed spatially because one country’s emissions effect the entire world, not just the area from which they originated. It is also distributed temporally because carbon emitted today will remain in the atmosphere, causing continual warming for up to 500 years to come. Another unique and challenging aspect of global climate change is strong dispersion between the causes and the effects. It is impossible to point to a particular drought or hurricane and say that it came directly from the carbon emitted from a particular coal plant. We are even unable to say that the these weather events came directly from climate change—the most we can say is that they were stronger or more frequent than they would have been without any warming. These factors leave us unable to use past challenges as a direct analogy to the challenges we face today.

Since this problem requires action from every country on the planet, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the best outlet to facilitate a global agreement to reduce carbon emissions. The UNFCCC is a protocol to create binding emissions reductions targets while still considering the different responsibilities that developed and developing countries have in relation to this problem.

The goals that you and your cabinet should strive to meet must be in line with what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This means keeping the average temperature rise between 1.5° and 2° Celsius and reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere below 350ppm. To reach those targets, we must reduce our emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050. While there may be compromises on how to make such reductions, the targets themselves are not negotiable because they are mandated by the natural laws of physics. Additionally, The United States must also poise itself as a bold leader in the international community. By bringing a sense of urgency to this problem, taking responsibility for our previous emissions, and refusing to delay action for worry of the economic repercussion, we will be an example to the rest of the world and encourage them to take bold action to reduce their emissions as well.

The first element that will bring your administration closer to reaching these goals is the agreement that will come out of this years UNFCCC meeting; COP15. This 15^th meeting of the countries who signed on to the UNFCCC was set to be the place where the successor to the Kyoto protocol was signed. Other heads of state and yourself have already lowered expectations and said that this is not a possibility based on the current situations of the main countries involved in the negotiations. Of course, it is the Senate’s responsibility to ratify any treaty that you sign, so in that sense, it was logical to put off any final treaty negotiations until a climate bill has been passed. While I acknowledge that you have invested your political capital in health care reform and that you have not been in office very long, it is very disappointing to see the hope of negotiating a legally binding treaty be thrown out the window before the negotiations even begin. My disappointment aside, there is still much that can, and must be accomplished at COP15.

First, the negotiations can produce a series of accords that can be acted upon right away. Even though the final, legally binding treaty may not be complete by the end of the two-week-long negotiations, there are many areas where countries can agree. Additionally, countries should be able to begin taking immediate action to reduce emissions based on these accords. Second, the accords that countries produce must be used as a foundation to create a draft treaty which get us 80-90% of the way to a complete treaty. Finally, there must be time line and a framework for turning the “politically binding” draft treaty into a legally binding one. This time line should terminate at COP16 where the final fair, ambitious and binding treaty will be produced.

Since the purpose of delaying the negotiations until COP16 is to pass a climate bill in Congress, the next element of strategy I would advise is to invest your political capital into passing a strong bill in the Senate. This bill must be passed before the midterm elections in the spring, when the political climate will be less conducive to such legislation. Most importantly, I suggest that you personally push domestically and internationally for a new metric to account for emissions reductions and use this bill as a forum for this shift. Currently, most emissions reduction targets are spoken about in terms of carbon caps. A more complete system should use the metric of “carbon cap equivalents” instead. The value in this new system is that it more fully represents any plan to reduce emissions. While a carbon cap is the most explicit metric, it generally only applies to industries that can be easily monitored. Carbon cap equivalents would allow the United States to account for other elements that will be part of the legislation including energy efficiency improvements, carbon intensity (CO₂ per unit GDP) reductions and highly verifiable offset credits.

Using such a metric internationally allows every country to wholly represent their emissions reduction pans. The World Resources Institute estimates that if the House version of the climate bill were measured in carbon cap equivalents, it could potentially reduce emissions by 23% below 1990 levels by 2020, whereas the direct carbon caps only measure 4% below 1990 levels. Since many developing countries, like China and India, refuse to agree to hard emissions caps and would rather talk about carbon intensity reductions, it would be beneficial to use a new metric that accounts for the progress they intend to make. Historically, the Senate has refused to enter into binding emissions reductions targets until China and India do the same. With this new measurement, it will be clear that China and India are taking action on the issue in a very real way, and the Senate will likely be more supportive of climate legislation.

Another card that you must play to pass a climate bill is to begin regulating carbon through the EPA under the Clean Air Act. Although the Act is very blunt tool for dealing with distributed pollution like greenhouse gases it can be used a political tool to make the cap-and-trade proposal in the senate bill look more favorable. Industry does not like direct regulation because it is not responsive to market forces and it is not as predictable as congressional legislation. Just today, the EPA announced it’s endangerment finding and it’s plan to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air act. This is a perfectly-timed announcement because it gives us more negotiating power in Copenhagen and, more importantly, it gives industries a chance to see what regulation would like before the climate bill comes to a vote in the Senate. With the option of a market-based cap-and-trade solutions on the table, polluting industries that might otherwise have opposed a climate bill suddenly have an incentive to support it because it is better than the alternative.

After the climate bill has arrived on your desk to be signed, the United States will be able to negotiate, sign and ratify an international treaty that it can live up to. The best place to do this will be at COP16 in Mexico. With specific targets in hand from the climate bill, it will be possible to nail down the remaining elements of the treaty and show the rest of the world that we are finally seriously addressing the issue of climate change. One important element of the treaty will be the time when it goes into effect. The predecessor to this treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, had a 55-55 clause which stated that it didn’t go into effect until 55% of countries had ratified the treaty and 55% of emissions were represented. It took 8 years for Russia to ratify the treaty and bump the total emissions represented over 55%. As our emissions must peak within the next few years, we absolutely cannot wait eight years to begin implementing this treaty.

After COP16, the United States has more work to do to tackle the climate change crisis. We must work hard to implement the climate bill and fulfill its obligations under the treaty that we will have ratified. Most bills are strengthened quite a bit after they are initially passed, so I also urge you to ensure that amendments which do this are proposed and passed during your term in office.

The eyes of the world are on your administration, Mr. President. I don’t want to have to explain to my children about flags being lowered in front of the United Nations building because a small island state no longer exists due to sea level rise from climate change. I want them to grow up in world with safe, clean energy and a stable climate. To have such a future, the United States needs to not only do its share to reduce emissions, but also use our position as a global leader to demand that other countries meet their obligations as well. All of this will take bold, dynamic leadership on your part. I am confident that future generations will praise you for the action that you take now to address the climate crisis.

REFERENCES

Bals, Christoph. Substance or Greenwash Show? The Time for Half Measures is Over. Issue brief. Berlin: Heinrich Boell Foundation, 2009. Print.

Larsen, John, and Robert Heilmayr. Emissions Reductions Under the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Tech. The World Resouces Institute, 19 May 2009. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. <http://pdf.wri.org/usclimatetargets_2009-05-19.pdf>.

Light, Andrew, Nina Hachigian, and Julian L. Wong. “Counting the Real Progress on Climate Action.” Web log post. Center for American Progress. 27 May 2009. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. <http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/05/counting_progress.html>.

Posted in Climate Policy, Copenhagen 2009, United Nations, United States, Youth Leaders