The climate change talks in Paris are moving much slower than expected, while clean energy proponents say confusion is growing over whether a deal would be a legally binding treaty that must be ratified by Congress.
“Momentum provided by leaders … has yet to [see] significant progress on the text” of any final deal, said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, speaking to reporters in Paris Thursday.
He was joined by the former deputy administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Bob Perciasepe, who heads the group, which works with states and local governments to advocate clean energy solutions. The group will be hosting EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at events in Paris this weekend.
Diringer said the “pace needs to pick up” if the nearly 200 countries at the United Nations summit are to meet the Dec. 11 deadline for an agreement. At the same time, he said there has been a great deal of confusion over whether any agreement would be legally binding and how Congress would respond if the deal were codified as a formal treaty.
Republicans are warning President Obama that he cannot enter into any formal treaty without congressional approval, especially given that the deal likely would drive up energy costs by placing the U.S. on a path of strict economy-wide reductions in fossil fuel use.
Diringer said the talks are on the road to making a deal a “treaty,” which would be legally binding and would require the Senate to approve it. But he said there are important distinctions between what a treaty is internationally and how it is interpreted in the U.S.
Diringer said the agreement would be a treaty, but historically the president has agreed to many treaties under his executive authority. Nevertheless, Obama would have a “very hard time” making the targets for emissions cuts under any deal enforceable under his executive powers.
Currently, there is “no foundation for an economy-wide” emissions target. If the president does not make the treaty’s targets enforceable, and given that he would have no legal basis for doing so, a Paris deal wouldn’t cross the threshold of submission to Congress for ratification.
“Any future president can withdraw” the U.S. from the treaty, but such action has been “rarely exercised,” Diringer said.
Perciasepe, speaking as the EPA’s former number two under Obama, said the agency’s regulations that underpin the U.S. commitment to any deal in Paris will be hard to undo, even if the Republicans elect a president who swore during the campaign to repeal the measures.
A president cannot come into the White House and repeal a regulation once it has been finalized. Under the law, “there is a public process to withdraw it, or the government can be sued” by states and others, he said.
