Obama is key to a better plan on climate change

Published on Friday 23 January 2009 21:21

THIS will be a make-or-break year for a new international deal on climate change. Against a background of global recession, the election of Barack Obama is one of the main reasons I have some hope the world's governments might do the right thing at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year and deliver on a promise to come up with a substantive emissions targets deal.

Although George W Bush's father signed up to the Kyoto targets, the United States never ratified them and US emissions have steadily risen through both Democrat and Republican administrations. But the US has been particularly obstructive for the eight years of Dubya's reign.

I was at the deeply depressing Hague climate conference in 2000, where the US successfully blocked progress on almost every issue under discussion.

I didn't go to last month's climate conference in Poland, where the US negotiating team was caught between the old and the new – appointed by Bush's people and still answering to him, but with one eye to what the new man will want. The result was a meeting of low expectations and little progress.

"America the deal blocker" is the context in which Obama stood for election. His Republican opponent, John McCain, had already tried to get climate change legislation through the US Senate, so we knew that a contest between these two would draw out new and significant promises on the environment. It even had the potential to result in a climate targets bidding war between them.

There are big expectations for Obama. With Europe backsliding on climate promises as Italy, Poland and Germany worry about recession, there is room for some real new leadership on the issue. The scientists say that global carbon emissions must peak by 2015 and then decline, so there are big hopes riding on the success of the Copenhagen talks.

In darker moments I have to wonder if we are fooling ourselves. There is a scenario in which we convince ourselves things are going to be all right because men of good intention are in charge, but actually they can't move things far enough.

In Copenhagen we might end up so happy that a new deal – any deal – has been agreed that we don't notice it is much too weak and locks us into disaster.

Let's not forget that a first-term president always thinks about being re-elected for a second term, so is tempted not to rock the boat too much.

But I am hopeful. Mr Obama's election promise was an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050 – a target like that of our own Scottish Climate Change Bill.

People are talking about his "green dream team", including a new energy and climate tsar. You have think that change is really coming when there is a tsar in the White House.

My colleagues in WWF-US are impressed with the people he has chosen for key positions on environment, energy and climate.

Obama was a senator in Illinois, a coal state that is the possessor of 11 nuclear reactors, more than any other US state. While he will clearly owe these industries a favour, he has already promised to spend $150 billion (about 110 billion) over the next decade promoting alternative energy sources and thereby creating five million "green collar" jobs. He proposes that 10 per cent of electricity will come from renewables by 2012, along with a reduction, against the trend, in electricity demand by 15 per cent by 2020.

And while a tax on transport fuels is several steps too far for any president, he does plan to force car makers to improve fuel economy year on year.

There is a long way to go. Obama certainly has a good plan for action at home, but he will also have to repair international bridges if he is to make a difference on the global stage.

In December, all eyes will be on Copenhagen, but much of the real work in getting a strong global deal will be done over the next ten months of UN sub-group meetings and bilaterals.

Obama needs to assemble a good team of diplomats and experts and send them scurrying around the world very soon.

Can the president rise to the challenge of helping forge a new, tough global deal on climate change? For all our sakes, I sincerely hope the answer is "yes he can".

&#149 Dr Richard Dixon is the director of environmental charity WWF Scotland