Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty
By CORAL DAVENPORT AUG. 26, 2014
A coal-fired power plant in Kentucky. Coal-heavy states
could be economic losers in any climate-change protocol that targets such
plants, which are among the largest greenhouse gas emitters. Credit Luke
Sharrett for The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/politics/obama-pursuing-climate-accord-in-lieu-of-treaty.html
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a
sweeping international climate change agreement
to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but
without ratification from Congress.
In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United
Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with
diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s
largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the
Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is
approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate
negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would
“name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to
face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries
around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.
“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters,
including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at
this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton
administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international
climate change policy.
Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill say there is no
chance that the currently gridlocked Senate will ratify a climate change treaty
in the near future, especially in a political environment where many Republican
lawmakers remain skeptical of the established science of human-caused global
warming.
“There’s a strong understanding of the difficulties of the
U.S. situation, and a willingness to work with the U.S. to get out of this
impasse,” said Laurence Tubiana, the French ambassador
for climate change to the United Nations. “There is an implicit
understanding that this not require ratification by the Senate.”
American negotiators are instead homing in on a hybrid agreement
— a proposal to blend legally binding conditions from an existing 1992 treaty
with new voluntary pledges. The mix would create a deal that would update the
treaty, and thus, negotiators say, not require a new vote of ratification.
Countries would be legally required to enact domestic
climate change policies — but would voluntarily pledge to specific levels of
emissions cuts and to channel money to poor countries to help them adapt to
climate change. Countries might then be legally obligated to report their
progress toward meeting those pledges at meetings held to identify those
nations that did not meet their cuts.
“There’s some legal and political magic to this,” said Jake
Schmidt, an expert in global climate negotiations with the Natural Resources Defense Council,
an advocacy group. “They’re trying to move this as far as possible without
having to reach the 67-vote threshold” in the Senate.
The strategy comes as scientists warn that the earth is
already experiencing the first signs of human-caused global warming — more
severe drought and stronger wildfires, rising sea levels and more devastating
storms — and the United Nations heads toward what many say is the body’s last
chance to avert more catastrophic results in the coming century.
At the United Nations General Assembly in New York next
month, delegates will gather at a sideline meeting on climate change to try to
make progress toward the deal next year in Paris. A December meeting is planned
in Lima, Peru,
to draft the agreement.
In seeking to go around Congress to push his international
climate change agenda, Mr. Obama is echoing his domestic climate strategy. In
June, he bypassed Congress and used his executive authority to order a
far-reaching regulation forcing American coal-fired power plants to curb their
carbon emissions. That regulation, which would not be final until next year,
already faces legal challenges, including a lawsuit filed on behalf of a dozen
states.
But unilateral action by the world’s largest economy will
not be enough to curb the rise of carbon pollution across the globe. That will
be possible only if the world’s largest economies, including India and China, agree to enact similar cuts.
The Obama administration’s international climate strategy is
likely to infuriate Republican lawmakers who already say the president is
abusing his executive authority by pushing through major policies without
congressional approval.
“Unfortunately, this would be just another of many examples
of the Obama administration’s tendency to abide by laws that it likes and to
disregard laws it doesn’t like — and to ignore the elected representatives of
the people when they don’t agree,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky
Republican and minority leader, said in a statement.
A deal that would not need to be ratified by the United
States or any other nation is also drawing fire from the world’s poorest
countries. In African and low-lying island nations — places that scientists say
are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change — officials fear that
any agreement made outside the structure of a traditional United Nations treaty
will not bind rich countries to spend billions of dollars to help developing
nations deal with the forces of climate change.
Poor countries look to rich countries to help build dams and
levees to guard against coastal flooding from rising seas levels, or to provide
food aid during pervasive droughts.
“Without an international agreement that binds us, it’s
impossible for us to address the threats of climate change,” said Richard
Muyungi, a climate negotiator for Tanzania. “We are not as capable as the U.S.
of facing this problem, and historically we don’t have as much responsibility.
What we need is just one thing: Let the U.S. ratify the agreement. If they
ratify the agreement, it will trigger action across the world.”
Observers of United Nations climate negotiations, which have
gone on for more than two decades without achieving a global deal to legally
bind the world’s biggest polluters to carbon cuts, say that if written
carefully such an agreement could be a creative and pragmatic way to at least
level off the world’s rapidly rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
About a dozen countries are responsible for nearly 70 percent
of the world’s carbon pollution, chiefly from cars and coal-fired power plants.
At a 2009 climate meeting in Copenhagen, world leaders tried
but failed to forge a new legally binding treaty to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Instead, they agreed only to a series of voluntary pledges to cut carbon
emissions through 2020.
The Obama administration’s climate change negotiators are
desperate to avoid repeating the failure of Kyoto, the United Nations’ first
effort at a legally binding global climate change treaty. Nations around the
world signed on to the deal, which would have required the world’s richest
economies to cut their carbon emissions, but the Senate refused to ratify the
treaty, ensuring that the world’s largest historic carbon polluter was not
bound by the agreement.
Seventeen years later, the Senate obstacle remains. Even
though Democrats currently control the chamber, the Senate has been unable to
reach agreement to ratify relatively noncontroversial United Nations treaties.
In 2012, for example, Republican senators blocked ratification of a United
Nations treaty on equal rights for the disabled, even though the treaty was
modeled after an American law and had been negotiated by a Republican
president, George W. Bush.
This fall, Senate Republicans are poised to pick up more
seats, and possibly to retake control of the chamber. Mr. McConnell, who has
been one of the fiercest opponents of Mr. Obama’s climate change policy, comes
from a coal-heavy state that could be an economic loser in any climate-change
protocol that targets coal-fired power plants, the world’s largest source of
carbon pollution.
Natural Resources Defense Council
Leonardo DiCaprio
is a trustee at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and was a board member for Global
Green USA.
Note: Leo DiCaprio Declares War on Western Industrial
Civilization (PAST RESEARCH)
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Natural Resources
Defense Council, the Sundance Institute, Roosevelt Institute,
the International Rescue Committee, Brookings Institution (think
tank), the ClimateWorks Foundation, and the Committee for
Economic Development.
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was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and married in 2013.
Christine
Lagarde attended George Soros’s 2013 wedding reception, and was the finance
minister for France.
Robert
Redford is a trustee at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the founder & president of the Sundance
Institute, and an honorary board member for Green Cross International.
Robert Redford
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_Redford
Robert Redford
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_Redford
Robert Redford is
an honorary board member for Green
Cross International.
Mikhail Gorbachev
is the founder of Green Cross International, an advisory board member for the Wheelchair Foundation, was the
general secretary for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the
president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Global Green USA
is a US affiliate of Green Cross International.
Valery Giscard
d'Estaing is an advisory board
member for the Wheelchair Foundation, and was the president of France.
Anna Eleanor
Roosevelt is an advisory board
member for the Wheelchair Foundation, and the chair for the Roosevelt
Institute.
Janet A. Howard
is a governor for the Roosevelt Institute, and a director at the French.American
Foundation.
Gillian
Martin Sorensen is a trustee at the Roosevelt Institute, a director
at the
International Rescue Committee, and was an assistant secretary-general for the United Nations.
Felix G. Rohatyn
is an overseer at the International Rescue Committee, a director at the French-American
Foundation, and his son is Nicolas S. Rohatyn.
Nicolas S.
Rohatyn is Felix G. Rohatyn’s son, and the founder of the Rohatyn
Group.
Pedro-Pablo
Kuczynski is a senior adviser for the Rohatyn Group, and was the finance
minister for Peru.
Elie Wiesel is an
overseer at the International Rescue Committee, and a messenger of peace
for the United Nations.
William J.
vanden Heuvel is an overseer at the International Rescue Committee,
and was a U.S. representative for the United Nations.
Samantha Power
was a director at the International Rescue Committee, is the U.S.
ambassador for the United Nations, and married to Cass R.
Sunstein.
Cass R. Sunstein
is married to Samantha Power, and a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
Susan E. Rice was
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), the United
Nations U.S. ambassador for the Barack Obama administration, and is
the White House national security adviser for the Barack Obama
administration.
Donald
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U.S. ambassador for the United Nations.
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Kauffman was a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and
a director at the French-American Foundation.
Walter J.P.
Curley is an honorary chairman for the French-American Foundation,
and was a U.S. ambassador for France.
Howard H. Leach
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a board member for the Haas School of Business, and a regent at the University
of California.
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board member for the Haas School of Business, a regent at the University
of California, married to Senator Dianne Feinstein, and an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Joan
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economic & social affairs for the United Nations, and the president of the Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation.
Doris
Duke Charitable Foundation was a funder for the ClimateWorks Foundation.
Bertrand P.
Collomb was a director at the ClimateWorks Foundation, and a director at the French-American
Foundation.
Elizabeth
Frawley Bagley was a director at the French-American
Foundation, and an alternate U.S. representative for the United Nations.
Charles E.M. Kolb
is a director at the French-American
Foundation, and the president of the Committee
for Economic Development.
Donna S. Morea
was a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development, and the EVP for the CGI Group Inc.
CGI Group Inc.
was the Obamacare contractor that
developed Healthcare.gov web site.
Obamacare is Barack Obama’s signature policy
initiative.
Douglas M. Price
is a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development, and a director at French-American Foundation.
Raymond G.
Chambers was a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and is a special envoy for malaria for the United Nations.
G. Richard Thoman
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Arthur A. Hartman
is a director at the French-American
Foundation, was a U.S. ambassador for France,
and a U.S. ambassador for the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Mikhail Gorbachev
was the president for the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the general secretary for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
and is the founder of Green Cross
International.
Global Green USA
is a US affiliate of Green Cross International.
Edward Norton is
a board member for Global Green USA, and a messenger of peace for the United
Nations.
Leonardo DiCaprio
was a board member for Global
Green USA, and is a trustee at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Ted Turner
Ted
Turner is an honorary board member for Green Cross International.
Ted Turner is an
honorary board member for Green Cross International, the founder of CNN,
and the co-chairman for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank).
Nafis
Sadik is a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank), and was the under secretary general for the
United Nations.
Hisashi
Owada is a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank), and was the Japanese representative for the United Nations.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a director
at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think
tank), the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), was a board member for the International
Crisis Group, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think
tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with
Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans for population
control by involving the United
States in war)
Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think
tank) was a funder for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank).
Jon M. Huntsman
Jr. is a a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), and was the China U.S.
ambassador for the Barack Obama administration.
J.
Stapleton Roy is a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (think tank), and was a U.S. ambassador for China.
Olara
A. Otunnu was a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (think tank), and the under secretary general for the United Nations.
Kofi
A. Annan is a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), a board member for the International
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his lawyer, and the secretary general for the United Nations.
Gregory
B. Craig was Kofi A. Annan’s lawyer,
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and was the White House counsel for the Barack
Obama administration.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank).
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Soros was the chairman for the Foundation
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Nancy E.
Soderberg was the VP for the International
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Mark
Malloch-Brown was the deputy secretary-general for the United Nations, and is a co-chair for the International Crisis Group.
Samantha Power
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Pickering is a co-chair for the International
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Benjamin W. Mkapa
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Adlai
Ewing Stevenson II was a U.S. ambassador for the United Nations, and Newton
N. Minow was his assistant counsel.
Newton N. Minow
was Adlai Ewing Stevenson II’s assistant
counsel, is a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
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Barack Obama was an
intern at Sidley Austin LLP.
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counsel at Sidley Austin LLP, and
the president of the Commercial Club of
Chicago.
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is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the Chicago (IL) mayor,
Ari Emanuel’s brother, and was the
White House chief of staff for the Barack
Obama administration.
Ari Emanuel is Rahm I. Emanuel’s brother, and the
co-CEO & director for William Morris
Endeavor Entertainment.
Charlize Theron
is a William Morris Endeavor
Entertainment client, and a messenger of peace for the United Nations.
Edward Norton is a
William Morris Endeavor Entertainment client,
a messenger of peace for the United
Nations, and a board member for Global
Green USA.
Global Green USA
is a US affiliate for Green Cross
International.
Leonardo DiCaprio
was a board member for Global
Green USA, and is a trustee at the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
Natural
Resources Defense Council is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.
Susan
Crown was a trustee at the Natural Resources Defense Council, is Lester Crown’s daughter, and a member
of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
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is Susan Crown & James S. Crown’s father, a member of
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Institute (think tank).
James S.
Crown is Lester Crown’s son, a
member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and a trustee at the Aspen
Institute (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Natural Resources Defense
Council, and the Aspen
Institute (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Yo-Yo
Ma is an artist in residence at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and a messenger of peace for the United
Nations.
Thomas R.
Pickering was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and a U.S. ambassador for the United
Nations.
Hisashi
Owada was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and a Japanese representative for the United
Nations.
Olara
A. Otunnu is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and the under
secretary general for the United Nations.
Walter
Isaacson is the president & CEO for the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and was the chairman & CEO for CNN.
Ted Turner is the
founder of CNN, an honorary board member for Green Cross
International, and the co-chairman for the Nuclear Threat Initiative
(think tank).
Ted Turner
Ted
Turner is an honorary board member for Green Cross International.
Nafis
Sadik is a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank), and was the under secretary general for the
United Nations.
Hisashi
Owada is a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank), and was the Japanese representative for the United Nations.
Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think
tank) was a funder for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank).
Olara
A. Otunnu was a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (think tank), and the under secretary general for the United Nations.
United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an organization for the United Nations.
Kyoto Protocol
was a coordinated agreement with the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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