Renewed international contacts, active participation in the climate negotiations and improved transatlantic relations: these are some of the changes expected of the United States´ next President. Most of the researchers that participated in the seminar The 2008 Presidential Election: What Might it Mean for International Climate Change Cooperation? agreed that, with a new President, the United States will play a more active role in international cooperation and negotiations. There was lively discussion at the seminar about how large a leadership role the country is willing to take on, as well as what commitments are reasonable to expect from it. Driving forcesClimate question
Under the title US & EU Approaches to Climate Change: Allies or Adversaries, Christer Karlsson, a researcher from the Political Science department at UppsalaUniversity, discussed how international leadership may be affected by the results of the presidential election. “In recent years the EU has taken a leading role in the climate question, but we can expect that the US will share that leadership. To understand how that leadership may look, we have to understand what drives the respective parties. In the United States, domestic politics — and the pressures that are strong there — are decisive in formulating international policy," he says.
Congress and Senate
Charles Parker, also from the Political Science department at UppsalaUniversity, pointed out that it is not only which President that leads the new administration that will affect the US´ international climate policy. The composition of the Congress and Senate are also important. “If, for example, McCain wins the presidential election, the current Congress, which is dominated by Democrats, will determine whether the United States will engage in successful environmental policy or not," he says.
Resources for the Future
Ray Kopp, an economist from the American research institute Resources for the Future and connected to the research programme CLIPORE, felt that regardless of which candidate takes office the new President must address a number of questions at home — such as the current financial crisis and the failing American real estate market — before attention can focus on the international climate negotiations. “In addition, the United States will have difficulty making international commitments that differ from their domestic commitments. So what is discussed and which measures are taken at both the federal and state levels will form a basis for the US´ ability to act internationally. For these reasons, one shouldn´t have too great expectations about the content of an eventual new climate agreement at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen next year," he says. Moreover, the world will be forced to take China into consideration in the international negotiations to a larger degree than previously. “China will demand to be treated like a peer, and we know that China will not sign on to an agreement that jeopardizes their energy supply," says Kopp.
Emissions trading
Emissions trading is one of the measures being used for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Dallas Burtraw, an environmental economist at Resources for the Future and connected to CLIPORE, is one of the foremost experts on financial instruments and policies in the climate field. He describes current developments in the United States as disjointed. For example, ten states in the northeastern US are implementing a trade programme for the electricity sector, while California has adopted a climate law that establishes goals for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions for the entire state. At the same time, a federal climate policy proposal (the Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill) that included amongst other things both emissions ceilings and emissions trading was rejected by Congress in June this year.
Greenhouse gases
What´s more, the European Union´s system for emissions trading differs from the systems being discussed in the US. The question is then, how important is it to coordinate measures at regional, national and international levels, and how fast must this happen? “I think that is important to not get locked into one system for emissions trading and see it as the solution for the entire problem. Sure it is uncomfortable having different systems for reducing greenhouse gases. But if we want to achieve a globally-consistent system we have to start by allowing a number of regional variations and learn how they work," says Dallas Burtraw.
