How Can the U.S. Lead in Paris to Achieve a Climate Agreement We Can Live With?

THE DEBATE

n a few weeks, the 21st Conference of States, then the biggest emitter, with no the Parties of the UN Framework Con- commitments. Ivention on Climate Change will convene Now, the United States has a chance in Paris to hammer out for the first time to lead again. Many of its concerns have an accord that will have binding targets already been resolved in the negotiating for nearly all nations, industrialized and framework, particularly the commitment developing alike. of developing countries. The United States is a party to the cli- We polled some of the leading think- mate convention, but it famously flamed ers and activists involved in the climate out on the Kyoto Protocol, an enforceable change negotiations, asking them what mandate for rich nations alone, which the United States needs to do to realize Al Gore signed but the Senate failed to an agreement that we can live with — one approve under those grounds. Even the that protects the environment and also signatory status was withdrawn by the wins favor in the Senate and among the Bush II administration, leaving the United American public.

46 |THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2015, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org. Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Nov./Dec. 2015 Joseph E. Aldy John Graham Associate Professor Dean Harvard Kennedy School Indiana School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Gary S. Guzy Bob Inglis Jennifer Morgan Senior of Counsel Director Global Director, Climate Program Covington & Burling LLP RepublicEN.org World Resources Institute

Jake Schmidt Durwood Zaelke Director, International Program President Natural Resources Defense Institute for Governance and Council Sustainable Development

to grow more stringent over time. Third, is it truly international, A Balanced, And it perhaps may try to do all with shared commitments that seem International of this within the confines of exist- equitable given the world’s growing ing legal authority, so as to avoid the energy demands? Approach need for implementing legislation Few could have foreseen, just that could doom participation by the months ago, the enormous progress Gary S. Guzy United States — and the prospect for that U.S. negotiators have made in a meaningful global agreement — if the ramp up to the Paris Conference he president and his cli- there were a ratification fight before of the Parties. The enrollment of mate negotiating team seem an impossibly divided Congress. national goals by the major emitting most like the high-wire art- There are three tests by which I nations already demonstrates that Tist Philippe Petit, who improbably suggest we evaluate the success of any there can be a global response to this strung a wire between the towers agreement: challenge. The idea that China will of the World Trade Center and First, does it prove to be endur- implement a cap-and-trade program, mustered reserves of guts and grace ing? Can the administration build that it has committed to a green — leavened by intense focus, prepa- enough momentum globally, domes- energy dispatch approach, and that ration, and a mild amount of lunacy tically, and with private-sector com- it has committed to the growth of — to walk between the twin towers. panies, who see cost-effective compli- renewables equivalent to the entire In order for there to be a suc- ance options and new clean energy existing electricity market in the cessful Paris climate outcome, the business opportunities, so that its United States is breathtaking. administration must likewise achieve continuance remains inevitable and Likewise, U.S. negotiators come a magnificent balance. It must dem- that it is just too damaging for a new armed with an ambitious and final- onstrate aggressive U.S. leadership administration to back away from? ized utility-sector Clean Power Plan, and commitments to inspire other Second, does it embrace a com- aggressive vehicle fuel efficiency nations to join suit, so that there mon global vision — the stabiliza- standards, and much progress in will be a truly global solution to this tion of greenhouse gas concentra- reducing building-sector emissions global problem. Yet it cannot be so tions in the atmosphere at a level that — thereby demonstrating the depth tough that it deters other nations would prevent dangerous anthropo- of the U.S. commitment to progress from similarly following suit. genic interference with the climate across all of our major sources of The United States must promote system — and give a directional greenhouse gas emissions. a bottom-up system that flexibly ac- sense to the emissions goal. This all All of this is not to say — just as commodates the circumstances of needs to be bounded by meaningful Philippe Petit had to contend with individual countries, yet it cannot science, and a process for updating the initial challenge of how to string allow so much flexibility that there is individual national commitments, the wire — that this magnificent no realistic hope of actually bettering with sufficient transparency around balance will be achieved with ease the climate situation. It must ac- individual country goals and their or grace. Senate Foreign Relations complish an agreement that is legally implementation that there is a re- Committee Chair Bob Corker re- binding to be meaningful, yet not alistic hope that these goals can be cently questioned the State Depart- prove to be so rigid that it falls of its met over time and the worst climatic ment’s approach to Senate consulta- own weight. impacts avoided. tion over any Paris agreement. And Our negotiators must commit to This process of continuous re- the overall enterprise seems to be a robust and comprehensive interna- finement is akin to the Clean Air coming up short on commitments. tional program addressing emissions Act’s long-standing process for con- Success should not be judged alone mitigation, adaptation to the already tinuously updating the fundamental by what happens in Paris, but by the locked-in effects of climate change, National Ambient Air Quality Stan- degree to which that balancing act and assistance for climate-impacted dards and is a structure with which inspires even further and enduring poor nations, yet not do something U.S. lawmakers and regulated indus- efforts. that is seen domestically as foolhardy tries should be very comfortable. It by taking on too great a comparative is more like what John Dingell once Gary S. Guzy, senior of counsel at Coving- burden, given the level of growing referred to — on the domestic front ton & Burling LLP, previously served as the emissions in countries such as China — as a “glorious mess” than would deputy director and general counsel of the and India and the degree to which be the top-down, more predictable, White House Council on Environmental Qual- that approach doomed the Kyoto streamlined, rigid, and compulsory ity in the Obama administration and as the Protocol. It must seek a solution approach of the ultimately unsus- general counsel of the Environmental Protec- now, even if the trajectory may need tainable Kyoto Protocol. tion Agency during the Clinton administration.