Climate Bill Dead, U.N. Takes Up The Good Fight
Thursday was full of bad news for a climate deal here in the U.S. Recognizing they could not wrangle the 60 votes necessary to pass a carbon cap, Senate Democrats put their hands up in surrender and pronounced the bill dead. Fortunately, it appears the international community will pick up the fighting spirit we've lost and move aggressively to salvage an international climate change treaty -- another deal whose death has been proclaimed time and time again.
As a way to salvage the 12-year-old Kyoto protocol, the United Nations has suggested amending its rules to require only four fifths of the countries to agree to a climate deal, effectively forcing the opposed nations to accept a cleaner earth. "It reflects a degree of desperation -- and justifiable desperation -- on the part of the UN," says Mark Lynas, who advised the Maldives at the international climate summit in Copenhagen last winter.
If the amendment passes this August when countries meet in Bonn, Germany, it could prohibit rogue anti-climate-treaty states -- such as the oil giant, Saudi Arabia, or major energy-using nations, such as the U.S. -- from holding the treaty hostage. "We saw at Copenhagen how some countries blocked progress and we can't allow that to happen again," said Britain's shadow secretary for energy and climate change Ed Miliband, according to The Guardian.
The harsh reality is that manmade climate change is real and is already having an impact worldwide. Island nations like Tuvulu and the Federated States of Micronesia, with sea levels already creating climate refugees, cannot hold out much longer. Allowing larger countries to harpoon a climate deal because it would harm their bottom line is unfair and unethical. The U.N. amendment could fix this problem.
But critics say that rather than hamstringing the world's harshest polluters who would suffer from stricter regulations, the amendment would hurt developing nations like Venezuela and Bolivia, which have relatively tiny carbon footprints but would likely be forced to make major concessions in climate deals. Even worse, the amendment could backfire to allow a majority of nations to band together and pass a toothless variety.
That the U.S. Senate has abandoned climate legislation shows that, despite the severity of climate change, the deliberative, deal-making process may never get us to a strict limit on carbon. "The Republicans don't want to cooperate on anything," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, to Politico. "On any of these major issues they vote no, and we've got to get some Republican votes because we don't have unanimity in our caucus. So we're still hoping they decide they want to govern instead of scoring political points."
The U.N. has faced similar obstructionism and may try to move against it. It's clear we could use this fighting spirit here in the US as well. Nuclear option anyone?
Photo credit: ¥§•ªˆ¨ˇ© LOVE © ˇ¨ˆª•§¥, Flickr user
Ben Buchwalter
writes a legal blog on consumer safety, and has worked at Mother Jones and Talking Point Memo. He caught the climate change bug through journalism in Michigan.
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