Fred Krupp's Remarks to the Point Carbon Conference

Posted: 02-Nov-2009; Updated: 02-Nov-2009

The full-text remarks of EDF President Fred Krupp at the November 2, 2009 Point Carbon Conference are below:

Think for a moment about the speech you'd expect to hear from an environmental leader on the eve of Copenhagen.

Now forget it. This is not going to be that speech.

You might expect someone in my position to call for – to demand – a final international agreement to solve the climate crisis before Copenhagen delegates go home for Christmas. I will not.

You might expect me to assert that the greatest threat to our planet will come about if New Year's Day 2010 arrives without a new treaty. It will not. And that signing a final treaty is the only way Copenhagen can be successful. It is not.

Let me explain.

Environmental advocates like me have hungered for years to wrap up climate negotiations in December 2009 with a strong, effective, final, international deal. For so long, we've focused on that big date, looming in the distance—the finish line of a long, exhausting race.

We've long hoped we'd be all done by the time the Copenhagen delegates go home. It now looks like we may instead be rounding the turn on the final lap.

Where exactly is the finish line for a climate deal? I believe it will be reached after the U.S. has enacted a firm and declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions. That will make it possible for the entire developed world to agree to binding, internationally enforceable emissions limits. And for the large developing countries to start on a path to have their emissions level-off and start declining by 2020, and to adopt their own binding emissions limits.

We may not get to that wonderful moment next month, since the Senate has not yet passed its own bill capping carbon emissions. But with leadership from President Obama, a core of dedicated House and Senate leaders – and the broadest array of environmental, business, labor, religious, and other groups I've ever seen working together … I'm confident that the Senate will pass a bill and early next year the President will sign a U.S. cap into law and lead the way to a comprehensive global agreement in 2010.

Meanwhile, EPA has been moving forward aggressively to fulfill the Supreme Court mandate and address global warming pollution under existing law. And just four months into the new Administration, EPA and the Energy Department announced an historic move – with the full cooperation of the auto industry and the environmental community – to cut carbon emissions by sharply increasing fuel economy standards.

But Secretary Clinton's climate negotiating team, led by Special Envoy Todd Stern, faces a very specific challenge in preparing for Copenhagen. In the 1990s, the Administration tried negotiating a climate treaty first and using the treaty to leverage Congress to act. The Senate sent a strong signal that it didn't like that approach.

The U.S. negotiators haven't forgotten what happened in the 90's. They have publicly and privately said for months that when it comes to binding emissions limits, the United States will not go where Congress has not gone first. I believe that's the right decision.

It's been clear for some time that the U.S. is not likely to complete action on the climate bill this year, though it's possible the full Senate could act before Copenhagen. If that were to happen, the Administration could, even without a signed bill, agree to a binding cap somewhere in the range of the House and Senate legislation – since both houses of Congress would have blessed it.

That would be a terrific outcome.

But we obviously can't count on it, with health care and other issues competing with climate for the Senate's attention.

If by Copenhagen the Senate has not yet given its stamp of approval, the U.S. negotiating team obviously can't agree to binding emissions reductions. And if the largest economy in the world hasn't agreed to binding reductions, there will not be a global deal to impose them. So: If there's no Senate bill, we won't be seeing the finish line next month.

That would be disappointing. But it wouldn't mean that Copenhagen will be a waste of time. Far from it.

There are many ways in which Copenhagen can – and I believe will – be a success even if the Senate does not pass a cap before the meeting.

First, the run-up to Copenhagen has already created a wave of momentum, as countries from Mexico to South Korea consider committing themselves to impressive new programs for reducing their own emissions. 

Perhaps the single most exciting piece of news is the progress being made on the program called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or REDD. Our negotiators should do everything they can to help propel that prospect along at Copenhagen. A REDD toolkit that includes market-based financing offers ways both to save the world's tropical forests and to help developed countries like ours reduce the costs of operating under an emissions cap.

Forest destruction, mainly in the tropics, has accounted for between 12 and 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That's as much as all the cars and trucks and buses in the world put together.

The REDD program would, for the first time, allow people who own forests to make money without chopping down trees. Compensating people for protecting forests instead of tearing them down would yield wonderful dividends – for the atmosphere, for biodiversity, and for poor communities around the world.

And to its great credit, Brazil has shown this is not just talk. Brazil has already made a commitment that it will, by 2020, reduce deforestation 80 percent below the 1996 to 2006 average – contingent on support from the international community. And Norway has put up a billion dollars over the next decade if Brazil continues to make its target.

Beyond these good developments already underway, there's other progress to be made at Copenhagen this year, too. Although the U.S. won't put a target on the table in Copenhagen if only one house of Congress has acted, our negotiators can help broker a political agreement on the key structural elements of a deal.

The U.S. delegation can negotiate based on the overall architecture of the legislation passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate.

By that, I mean:

• full reporting of emissions for all nations;
• caps on overall emissions for industrialized nations based on historical baselines;
• caps that tighten over time;
• a high-integrity offsets program that encourages other nations to graduate swiftly to absolute caps;
• and a robust compliance and enforcement program.

In other words, Copenhagen 2009 can be extremely productive, even though it will not be the last word in climate talks.

 

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So, defining success correctly is the key.

In the absence of Senate action, it would be absurd to define success as signing a final agreement this year with voluntary or non binding caps, because the very act of signing such an agreement could gravely damage prospects for getting the U.S. itself under a cap. Getting out ahead of Congress with a global agreement didn't work in the 90s and it won't work now.

So the definition of success must be different: do as much as we can this year and keep moving to finish the job next year. That definition will provide plenty of meaty work for the delegates, and plenty of procedural and substantive milestones for the record books.

 

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Now I want to discuss what are sometimes called the optics.

In diplomacy, it's not unknown for one country to try to blame another if an international negotiation does not come out as the country hoped.

And from time to time the finger of blame is pointed at my own country.

In my judgment, it would be unfair to blame the Obama Administration for the fact that the Congress has not finished its work.

This Administration and the Congressional leadership have spent considerable political capital to advance climate action. But for better or worse, the United States Senate operates at its own deliberative pace – and forcing it to move faster is often a recipe for failure.

It would also be unfair to criticize the Administration for declining to rush into a final deal in Copenhagen when the Senate has not acted.

A premature, under-ambitious deal would not be supported by Congress and would be terribly harmful to the cause of fighting climate change. The truth is that there is no magical significance to having a final deal before midnight on December 18th, 2009.

The planet will little note nor long remember the date that is printed on the final Copenhagen agreement. What the planet will remember is whether heat-trapping emissions are brought under control in time to avoid terrible consequences.

That's why our immediate goal must be environmental, not chronological. An accord with binding limits on pollution, signed in 2010, is infinitely preferable to an unenforceable agreement signed by an arbitrary date in 2009.

 

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Why are binding, internationally enforceable emissions limits so critical to winning the fight against dangerous climate change? The most important reason is substantive: binding, enforceable emissions caps are what ensure that we actually reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Only binding caps provide a way to prevent the flooding of the homes and businesses of tens of millions of people from South Florida to Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam. Only binding caps can offer protection to the billions of people whose access to fresh water is at risk, whether from diminished snowpack in the Sierra Nevada or melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Only binding caps will ensure that we can leave our children and grandchildren a world with a fair resemblance to the one we know.

Because the future is at stake, we must make sure that violations of emissions caps will have consequences. That's why international enforcement is crucial: the nations that join hands and agree to reduce emissions by specified amounts need to be able to effectively police one another's compliance.

We all know the difference between rules that are really enforced – like parking regulations here in Manhattan – and rules that are on the books but ignored, like the law against jaywalking. While flouting the rule against jaywalking is usually harmless, violating emissions caps is not. To hold all nations to their commitments, we need limits that are credible and enforced.

Those are the reasons why binding, internationally enforceable caps are absolutely indispensable to the planet.   Such caps also have great financial significance. Because accountability will lead private money to flow to energy efficiency and clean energy projects.

With mandatory real caps on all major emitters, large-scale trading of emissions permits becomes possible. Note that I said real caps for all major emitters, not intensity-based limits or simply project-based offsets like the Clean Development Mechanism or CDM.

These are important distinctions.

Reductions in emissions intensity – that is, emissions per unit of economic output, a goal first outlined at the presidential level by George W. Bush back in 2002 – can be useful in trying to get economies to grow more efficiently. But since meeting intensity limits can always be accomplished by simply increasing the denominator – that is, by boosting economic output without reducing emissions – they are not an effective tool for driving down total emissions.

And allowing intensity reductions to be traded into a cap-and-trade market would be a recipe for destroying the essence of accountability. There would be no way to ensure that a ton is a ton.

Accountability also lies at the core of the mounting opposition to extending the CDM indefinitely for big emitters whose emissions are growing rapidly. Because the CDM was not designed to bring down overall global emissions, it only serves to move part of the developing world's business-as-usual emissions to industrialized countries. As the EU and a growing number of small emitting developing countries are now saying publicly, if the CDM is the only mechanism for engaging big developing countries, industrialized countries could cut their emissions to zero and we still couldn't avert dangerous warming.

We've got to create a glide path for the big emitters among developing countries to get their major sectors off CDM and onto absolute caps as soon as possible.

Now, developing countries are understandably concerned about their economic growth. And I've got news for them: Congress is very concerned with maintaining America's as well.

That's why cap and trade is so important: it drives emissions down while driving economic growth forward. The 1990 amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act demonstrated this powerfully. By placing a cap on total acid rain pollution and allowing electric utilities to trade emissions under the cap, the U.S. cut sulfur dioxide emissions in half, at a fraction of the projected cost, all while the economy grew – including the electricity sector.

And just like what happened with sulfur dioxide trading, emissions trading for carbon will become the principal engine of innovation, investment and cost control. Without mandatory, enforceable caps, the growth of carbon markets would be severely stunted.

In other words, without accountability there won't be rewards for the companies and countries that find innovative ways to reduce carbon pollution.

Indeed, without accountability an agreement is no success.

We can't define success based on the date an agreement is reached – in December 2009 versus sometime in 2010. That would be imposing an artificial deadline.

The atmosphere doesn't care about signing ceremonies or photo opportunities. It cares about concentrations of heat trapping gases. That's the North Star on which we need to fix our gaze.

President Obama and his team know this.

That's why the Administration must, and I believe will, recognize that the only final agreement it can sign is one that has binding, enforceable emissions targets.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Meanwhile, back in the United States, how do we get to our own finish line? Simply put, Congress needs to finish what it's started.

And then, after Congress passes a climate and energy bill with an emissions cap, the diplomats can do the final work on a strong global treaty.

I think we're going to get there.

Let me tell you why I'm optimistic.

There were many who predicted last spring that the House would be unable to move climate legislation. But House leaders surprised them. The leaders built a winning coalition for a binding emissions cap. A coalition that included allies from the heart of the industrial Midwest. From coal country. From Fortune 500 companies and major labor unions. From among environmentalists, farmers and forest owners.

It was a formula for success that can be repeated in the Senate.

I expect we will look back and say that, in the Senate, the tide turned in favor of passage of a binding emissions cap a couple of weeks ago.   That was when two unlikely allies, Lindsey Graham and John Kerry, published an op-ed – laying out a comprehensive package that could win bipartisan support for a climate and energy bill with a binding carbon cap.

 

* * * * * * *

 

I'll close with this thought:

We need Copenhagen to be a locomotive helping to pull all the cars in the global train toward a low-carbon, high-efficiency economy. Not a locomotive rushing to reach a destination next month for the sake of a timetable, no matter who's on board or what the destination might turn out to be.

 If that means that we high-five each other in 2010, and not in 2009 as we'd always hoped, so be it. I'll be there, with bells on.

Thank you.