U.S. President Barack Obama favors mandatory emissions cuts and a global climate treaty. At the state level, governments have already enacted some cutting-edge climate policies.
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National Policies
For a long time the U.S. government lacked a comprehensive federal climate policy. While former President George W. Bush was reluctant to accept climate change as a man-made problem, his successor Barack Obama has set the U.S. on a more radical course to fight or at least mitigate global warming.
There are only a few U.S. politicians left that cite a lack of scientific consensus about climate change in order to avoid mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. A large group, however, seems reluctant to initiate policy that could mean costs for many U.S. businesses and industries, which might result in the loss of jobs.
Instead, they prefer voluntary, non-binding measures aimed at improving energy efficiency, promoting technological development, and reducing gasoline consumption. This reflects a common American approach of using market forces to address social problems.
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change, however, finds that without mandatory carbon constraints, U.S. emissions will rise by 15 to 50 percent from year 2000 levels to 2035.
Democrats as well as Republicans are now calling for a clear and proactive federal policy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Three trends are pressuring this gradual shift in U.S. climate politics.
The Role of Businesses
Large American businesses have begun to recognize the problem. In February 2007, 85 businesses and organizations gathered at the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, a framework for clean energy and climate change action organized by the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Companies said they wanted clarity from Washington so that they could better figure climate change into their long-term strategies.
Public Opinion
The second trend pushing for federal action on climate change is public opinion. Hurricane Katrina, heat waves in 2006, and Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth have all spiked public interest and awareness about the dangers of global warming.
Polls are reflecting this increasing concern. According to a 2007 survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, roughly 80 percent of surveyed Americans think global warming should be addressed.
Local Action
Public concern about climate change has fuelled a third potentially influential trend – local and state political action. Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger won a reelection bid in 2006 largely due to popular plans to cut state emissions, promote energy efficiency, and by leading the first state initiative to regulate CO2 emissions from vehicles.
Meanwhile, over 900 mayors of cities across the country–representing more than 81 million Americans–have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Essentially, this commits their cities to meeting or beating targets proposed for – but never accepted by - the United States in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol: a 7-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2012.
Court Rulings
Among the other signs of a policy shift, a landmark April 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court stands out. The court voted in favor of twelve states that accused the U.S. EPA of not effectively regulating emissions.
In the future, U.S. courts might also be involved in law suits regarding climate change liability and whether climate change victims are entitled to compensation. According to a study published in the Stanford Journal of International Law in 2007, more than 50 percent of the largest 500 publicly held companies in the U.S. were doing a bad job at disclosing climate risks to investors and, as a result, were at risk of shareholder lawsuits.
International Policies
As the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, U.S. participation is critical to the success of any global effort to slow climate change. So far, international criticism had focused on U.S. unwillingness to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
President Barack Obama has vowed to make climate change a priority. But economic problems and a reluctant U.S. Senate are limiting his room for maneuver. In a vote in April 2009, a majority of Senate members rejected Obama's effort to put climate-change legislation on a fast track, making it harder for Congress to put limits on greenhouse gas emissions in 2009.
Obama, however, is not the first committed U.S. President struggling with the U.S. Senate. In 1997, the Senate rejected binding emission reduction targets stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol that had already been signed by President Bill Clinton.
Instead, the United States entered into a number of informal international and voluntary frameworks for addressing climate change, most notably the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6) with China, Japan, India, Australia and South Korea.
Hopes are high that President Obama's commitment could facilitate upcoming UN negotiations on a post-Kyoto climate treaty. Such an effort could finally result in U.S. leadership on the international stage.
Sources: World Resources Institute, New York Review of Books, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Washington Post, Worldwatch Institute, The Climate Group
editor: Valdis Wish
latest update: April 21, 2009
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