The stage is being set for negotiating a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. is trying to exert some leadership in the international climate change debate by attempting to build consensus for binding carbon emission reductions prior to the upcoming Copenhagen meeting. Meanwhile, carbon legislation is, thankfully, stalled in the Senate, and developing countries are rejecting our entreaties. You can’t win if other countries don’t want to play.
Trouble Begins at Home
The Copenhagen meeting scheduled for early December begins the formal negotiations of a follow-on agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement dedicated to reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Developing nations, such as China and India, were not included in any numerical emissions limitations in the original Kyoto agreement.
The Obama administration has signaled that it supports developing a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol but will sign a new agreement only if China commits to making "significant, robust" reductions of carbon dioxide. However, President Barack Obama can strut his moral authority for demanding international reductions in carbon emissions at Copenhagen only if the Senate passes and he signs the bloated Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) or some variant.
However, ACES is a bad hand for one specific reason: It promises to achieve only the slightest reduction in global ambient temperatures — 0.05C to 0.2C through 2050, depending on which source you believe — at the cost of trillions of dollar to the U.S. economy. John McCain, coauthor of the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act that failed a 2007 Senate vote, is quoted in the August 1 issue of The Wall Street Journal as saying, "[The Waxman-Markey] 1,400-page bill is a farce. They bought every industry off — steel mills, agriculture, utilities."
"I would not only not vote for it," he continued, "I am opposed to it entirely because it does damage to those of us who believe that we need to act in a rational fashion about climate change."
Even climate scientist James Hansen states in an editorial published by Columbia University on July 13 titled "Strategies to Address Global Warming" that "The truth is, the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. It is an exceedingly inefficient way to get a small reduction of emissions. It is less than worthless."
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