Jeff Goodell :
(From previous issue)
Finally, the agreement eviscerates one of the favorite talking points of climate deniers. “Their argument has always been we can’t do anything to cut emissions because China is not doing anything,” says Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. “Well, now China is doing something pretty significant, while Republicans are still huddled in the dark castle of denial.”
Of course, in the U.S., it took conservatives 30 seconds to begin hammering the deal as an economic suicide pact, arguing that the U.S. had committed to deep carbon reductions over the next decade, while the Chinese agreed to basically do nothing until 2030.
In a column titled “The Climate Pact Swindle,” Fox News regular Charles Krauthammer called the agreement “the most one-sided deal since Manhattan sold for $24 in 1626.” Among other things, Krauthammer’s argument ignores China’s commitment to 20 percent nonfossil fuel power by 2030.
As Sen. Whitehouse told me, “The idea that China has committed to doing nothing for the next 16 years is only true if you believe that Chinese leaders are going to wake up on New Year’s Eve in 2029 and suddenly build 1,000 gigawatts of clean energy in one night.”
The more substantial question is whether China and the U.S. can follow through on their commitments. Ironically, the Chinese may have more credibility than the U.S. “?’Face’ is very important to the Chinese,” says Schell. “When they commit to something publicly, they do it.” Podesta agrees: “The Standing Committee has approved this commitment. The People’s Congress will approve it. It will be imbedded in Chinese law.
That is significant.”
The U.S. commitment, on the other hand, stands on shakier political ground. As David Victor, professor of International Relations at the University of California, San Diego, and author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, puts it, “It’s not clear yet if it is an Obama climate agreement or a U.S. climate agreement.” In the Senate, Mitch McConnell has already said that he will use his new powers as majority leader in 2015 to launch a full-scale attack on the EPA rules on power-plant pollution – if that attack is successful, it would be all but impossible for the U.S. to meet its carbon-reduction commitment.
Podesta, who will leave the administration in early 2015 and will likely play a senior role in Hillary Clinton’s not-yet-announced presidential campaign, relishes the fight. “They can investigate us, harass us, try to defund us,” warns Podesta. “But the president won’t flinch on this. This is our line in the sand.”
The fact that implementation of the EPA rules is likely to come in the middle of the 2016 election campaign is just another part of the White House political strategy. “What will become more apparent is that a candidate who denies the reality of climate change will have a hard time getting elected president,” Podesta says.
“The candidate who says, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem, I think we can work to solve it’ is going to win. I don’t think you ever go wrong playing for higher ground.”
However this plays out in the U.S., it is an indisputable fact that this deal has changed the odds for a new global climate agreement in Paris in 2015. Big questions remain about how much cash the West will pony up to help the developing world finance clean-energy projects and adapt to climate change, but that can be resolved. “This is a sea change in how we think about solving the problem,” says Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid’s senior climate-change adviser in London.
“We will get a deal in Paris now, I’m certain of it. Will it be enough? No. But it will lay the foundation for the future. And it will say to the world, for the first time, ‘We are serious about this.’
(Concluded)
