US envoy Todd Stern's climate deal warning
Updated on 17 October 2009
US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern warns that it is "certainly possible that there won't be a deal" at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.
Progress towards a climate change deal at Copenhagen has been far too slow, and emerging economies like India, China and Brazil need to do more, warned President Obama's climate change envoy Todd Stern.
He and other negotiators from the leading industrial nations are gathering in London tonight for a meeting tomorrow to make progress ahead of December's summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Its purpose is to find new targets and actions to prevent global temperatures rising any more than two degrees Celsius.
The UK and Europen Union have so far agreed to a 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and an 80 per cent reduction by 2050.
The United States has also agreed to the 2050 reduction plan, but crucially has no commitment for 2020.
Mr Stern told Channel 4 News: "It's certainly possible that there won't be a deal in Copenhagen. This is a tough negotiation.
"If you look at what all of these countries are doing, and that includes China and India and Brazil and South Africa and all of the developed countries, everybody is doing significant things or is poised to do significant things.
"That's a very positive element, what we need to have happen is for China and India and Brazil and South Africa and others to be willing to take what they're doing, boost it up some, and then be willing to put it in to an international agreement where they're standing behind what they say just the way we're standing behind what we say we're going to do."
India's Special Envoy on Climate Change, Shyam Saran, told Channel 4 News that the American position was "quite predictable".
"You don't have many cards to play, and then you keep asking others to put their cards on the table," he said. "This is not the way to go forward".
"The developed countries who agreed that they have a historical responsibility for the kind of challenge we are facing have to take the lead.
"Now, let us see what the US has to put on the table."
Transcript: Todd Stern interview
Q: Let me ask you first, I'm sure you've seen the quotes often, is it unfair to say there's an ambition gap between America and Europe when it comes to Copenhagen?
A: I think that it is unfair, yes. I have certainly heard those comments often but I think if you look at what the President has done, if you look at what we’re proposing to do it is highly ambitious and quite comparable with the EU.
Q: Are you prepared to make an ambitious, specific target for how much you would cut emissions by 2020 that you would put on the table at Copenhagen?
A: Well, we have always said that what we have put on the table is going to be linked up with what we do domestically. When I came in to this job back the beginning of the year I made it very clear that it is not useful for us to repeat the Kyoto experience.
In Kyoto we in effect ended up putting the cart before the horse, we went in with an international target, there was a domestic policy vacuum basically, there wasn't any support built up for that target. It came back, we didn't have any support, the thing didn't get done and it didn't really do any good. So what we have been looking to do from the beginning is to have a domestic policy foundation for what we do and political support at home.
Q: Does that mean if you do not have legislation passed in the US you can't go in to Copenhagen and agree to it bindingly?
A: I didn't say that. What I said is that we need that domestic foundation and I think that we have law that is legislation that is past the House of Representatives, actually past extraordinarily quickly, that is pending in the Senate right now and is moving in the Senate.
I don't know whether it will be done by the time of Copenhagen or not but it is certainly in play. I'm not going to speculate on how far it goes in the process by the time we get to Copenhagen and I think we have to see.
Q: The legislation that is pending in the Senate and has already been past in the House doesn't commit the US to anything likes the number of cuts that European countries have, 20 per cent by 2020 and in Britain's case 34 per cent by 2020. It doesn't look very ambitious.
A: No, but comparability can be looked at in many different ways, let me put it that way. We're talking about a 17 per cent cut against 2005 that would ramp all the way up to 83 per cent against 2005 which is equivalent…
Q: Not to 2050 though?
A: At 2050. But every year it's not an aspirational thing, these are actual hard caps that would move each year from that 17 to about 40 per cent by 2030 and all the way down to eighty something. The US is quite comparable with Europe against every measure but 1990. 1990 picks up a period of time between then and now in which, to your credit, the European have done a lot.
The US, during a period long before the President got in to office, didn't do as much as it would have been good to do. But what we can affect now if what we are doing from this point. And if you look what we're talking about from now or from 2005 type time period, what we're talking about to 2020 and beyond is quite comparable. And when you look at other factors like our economic growth, our population growth, by many measures the effort for the US to do what we're talking about is as much or more than Europe.
Q: But when President Obama was first elected he said the US would lead the global response on climate change.
A: Right, right.
Q: You're describing the way in which you have one hand effectively tied behind your back when you go in to these negotiations because of the domestic political climates, how can you therefore be leading?
A: Look, let's start with what the President did when he came in to office. One of the very first things that he did was to push a very large stimulus bill to get the economy going, about eight hundred billion dollars. Some eighty billion dollars of that is directed towards green investments of all kinds. That's a huge amount.
That compares to a usual RND number for energy in the US of three to four billion dollars. EPA, our Environmental Protection Agency, put in place the most aggressive fuel economy standards for cars ever in the United States by a large margin, in March. Just in the last 2 or 3 weeks the EPA announced a new process that will apply strong standards to stationary stores, power plants and big industries. So there's all of that going on and then we have this centrepiece legislation which is moving very rapidly by our standards, and for legislation of that scope
Q: Nobody can deny that the US has done a lot in the last 10 or 11 months but scientists agree that unless we've got something like a 25 per cent or a 40 per cent cut in emission by 2020 we're approaching dangerous climate change. The US is talking about things way below 20 per cent, that's not leading.
A: I really don't agree with that. There is a pathway to get to where we would like to go which is in the vicinity of no more that a 2 degree centigrade rise by 2050 and beyond. There is a pathway that could get you there with a 25 per cent cut as you said and there are any number of other pathways and those include the pathways that we're talking about.
The difference between the trajectory, the pathways that the President has articulated and the pathway that you're talking about for the United States in 2050 would be about one part per million in the atmosphere. It's not as big difference.
We are talking about getting to the same place, we can't turn the clock back and say President Obama comes in and he's going to be able to start in 1990 or 1995, we've got to start where we are. And staring where we are we are laying out a very aggressive path that would include a very significant reduction right of the bat in this first decade and every decade going beyond. So I'm very comfortable with that and I'm very comfortable with the notion that the President is in fact leading.
Q: Will the President lead by going to Copenhagen? The Environment Secretary in the UK said yesterday there'd be significantly less chance of a successful deal if the President doesn't turn up.
A: Well, there haven't been any decisions made about that. I think it is certainly the case that if you look at history, including going back to Kyoto that these negotiations and these big meetings, including the biggest ones, have been held at the Ministerial level. That's what the expectation has been all along and I'm not going to speculate one way or another on whether the President would come to Copenhagen. The expectation all the way through has been that this is a Ministerial meeting and that's still our expectation right now.
Q: Is it possible there won't be a deal in Copenhagen?
A: Is it possible? It's certainly possible that there won't be a deal in Copenhagen. This is a tough negotiation. I think that the negotiations, if you look what has been going on in the UN framework convention negotiations, the big negotiations of the 190 countries, have been making progress that is much too slow.
I think it is also true, and this is a paradox of the whole thing, that if you step back and you look at what the big countries, developed and developing are actually doing – we've pulled together a group and that's why I'm going to London tomorrow for a meeting of the major economies.
If you look at what all of these countries are doing, and that includes China and India and Brazil and South Africa and all of the developed countries, everybody is doing significant things or is poised to do significant things. And that's an important piece of news, that has never been true before. And I think that that's true, importantly because of this negotiation that has been going on, and because of developments over the last year and the last few years.
That's a very positive element, what we need to have happen is for China and India and Brazil and South Africa and others to be willing to take what they're doing, boost it up some, and then be willing to put it in to an international agreement where they're standing behind what they say just the way we're standing behind what we say we're going to do.
And what we expect what we need to do is of a different order, we're talking about significant reductions against some base line – we're talking about those base lines. We need to see from them significant actions that will reduce their trend lines, so to speak. They don't have to do the same thing we have to do but they need to stand behind what their actions are and an international agreement just the way we do.
And if we can do that then we can get a deal done, there is a deal there to be done.
