The State Department’s top climate negotiator wants an international deal to reduce greenhouse gases to be legally binding except for the amount the U.S. and other countries have to cut their emissions.
Todd Stern, the department’s climate envoy, endorsed a proposal by New Zealand that includes legally binding measures prodding countries to make commitments for curbing emissions, creating mechanisms to account for and review those pledges, and establishing a schedule of meetings every five years to update targets.
What isn’t legally binding under the plan is the specific commitments each country would make to curb emissions, Stern said. He acknowledged that some countries would find that too tame, but he argued that is too purist of an approach.
“We would counsel against that kind of orthodoxy,” he said Tuesday in a speech at Yale University.
“Many countries, if forced to put forward legally binding commitments at the international level, are inevitably going to lowball their commitment out of fear,” Stern said, who noted earlier in the speech that climate commitments make countries “nervous” about how doing so might affect their economies.
That’s certainly one of the White House’s fears with the Senate.
Part of the reason Stern praised the New Zealand approach is that a legally binding international pact that seeks specific emissions cuts wouldn’t secure the 67 Senate votes needed for ratification. Republicans and some centrist Democrats would block it, saying that such efforts would hinder the economy.
But the European Union and others have said cuts must be legally binding, and balked at suggestions otherwise. Stern alluded to that sentiment Tuesday, noting, “some do disapprove of the New Zealand idea.”
Stern said getting agreement on a legally binding foundation for reviewing and updating commitments — he was hoping to make those final pledges in 2025, though others are pushing for a 2030 end date — could avoid potentially painful efforts to bring nations back to the table in later years.
“Remember, the Paris agreement is not just about 2025 or even just about 2030,” Stern said. “It’s about trying to create a lasting framework that won’t have to be renegotiated over and over.”
The nuanced tack Stern advocated underscores the complex task facing negotiators in Paris, where nations will seek to set the framework for a deal to avoid a 2 degrees Celsius global temperature rise by 2100.
Stern noted that corralling the nearly 200 nations involved in the negotiations has been monumentally difficult. He said “long-standing North-South resentments” and procedural mechanisms that allow small groups of countries to block deals have dogged talks in the past.
This time, Stern said the talks should demand “unconditional” commitments from all nations, meaning no one country’s actions should hinge on those of another or on receiving funding.
Stern also said that U.N. talks are working with a new mandate that requires participation from all countries, a major difference from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that allowed China and India to bow out because they said curbing emissions would keep millions in poverty. Most scientists say manmade emissions are stoking climate change, mainly from burning fossil fuels such as the coal used in power plants.
The omission of China and India kept the U.S. from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Stern said that can’t happen again, noting developed nations account for more than half of global emissions and will contribute roughly two-thirds of them by 2030.
“The central meaning of this mandate was that the new agreement would not be Kyoto. The new agreement would have obligations and expectations that would apply to all countries,” Stern said. “There really is no other way to conceive of an international regime.”
