Republicans took aim at President Obama’s international climate change agenda Thursday when they voted 51-46 to require any global or bilateral emissions deals to get Senate approval.
While that wasn’t enough to pass, since 60 votes were needed, it demonstrates that the GOP intends to hamstring Obama’s attempts to sign an emissions pact at United Nations climate negotiations in Paris in December.
“I think the Constitution is pretty clear on agreements negotiated between countries. There is a Senate role to be played — it requires the advice and consent of the Senate. The Senate should insist that we do that job,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the sponsor of the amendment on legislation authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline.
Obama intends to use much of this year to drum up momentum for the Paris talks. The nearly 200 nations involved want to strike a deal to reduce emissions beyond 2020 to keep global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
“I am determined to make sure American leadership drives international action,” Obama said in his Tuesday State of the Union address.
The White House is seeking an arrangement that wouldn’t require Senate approval — likely by agreeing to a legally enforceable system of reviewing country pledges, but not to a specific, legally enforceable emissions cut. The administration wants to avoid going through the Senate because it’s likely it wouldn’t get the 67 votes needed from the GOP-led upper chamber to ratify an international treaty.
The amendment from Republicans is a direct shot at the administration’s international climate strategy. It channeled the GOP’s intention to take whacks at Obama’s authority to execute his climate agenda beyond U.S. borders.
“That puts too much authority in the hands of the president,” Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., told the Washington Examiner. “I would consider this as a kind of a low-grade trade. Just like with the czars and all this other stuff, it’s just a way of going around what’s traditionally been done. These whatever you want to call them are extremely important agreements.”
Even though the amendment failed, battles over Obama’s international climate plans await.
Obama is expected to ask Congress for $3 billion in additional climate aid to give to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N.-created bank that doles out funds to developing nations so they can adapt to the effects of climate change. Republicans aren’t expected to acquiesce.
Republicans were particularly incensed over a non-binding deal Obama reached with China in November. They said it forced the U.S. to make immediate commitments while China would not. Under the agreement, the United States would aim to curb emissions 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. China said it would aim to have its emissions begin to fall around 2030, which conservatives slammed as giving China a free pass.
“In the president’s climate change deal, the United States will be required to more steeply reduce our carbon emissions while China won’t have to reduce anything,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said when Obama announced the November accord. “This deal is a non-binding charade.”
Still, observers of international climate negotiations say the Chinese commitment is significant, even if it matches the government’s previous estimates for reaching peak emissions.
That’s because China, the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter, for the first time publicly acknowledged it would attempt to curb emissions. That comes after years of obstructing international negotiations out of concerns that reducing emissions would keep millions of its residents in poverty.
Obama is heading to India next week to discuss climate and other issues with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in hopes of getting the world’s third-biggest greenhouse gas emitter on board with the top two. India, like China, has stood in the way of previous international talks out of concerns for the subcontinent’s poor.
Obama called the China agreement “historic” in his State of the Union address, and said it would encourage other nations to get involved in negotiations now that the countries that account for 45 percent of the world’s emissions were on the same page.
“Because the world’s two largest economies came together, other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that, this year, the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we’ve got,” Obama said.
