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Obama, at U.N. Climate Summit, Calls for Vast International Effort Obama Presses Chinese on Global Warming
(about 5 hours later)
UNITED NATIONS — President Obama, emboldened by the use of his executive powers to fight climate change at home, sought on Tuesday to marshal more than 100 world leaders behind a vast international effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and curb global warming. UNITED NATIONS — President Obama, emboldened by his use of executive powers to fight climate change at home, challenged China on Tuesday to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming.
But Mr. Obama, in pledging that the United States would set ambitious new targets to cut emissions in advance of critical global climate talks next year, will leave much of the hard work to his successor, or even the president after that. And in many countries, the mechanisms for achieving deep cuts in carbon emissions remain as politically and economically difficult as ever. Declaring that the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies and largest polluters — bear a “special responsibility to lead,” Mr. Obama said, “That’s what big nations have to do.”
“Yes, this is hard,” Mr. Obama said to the United Nations General Assembly chamber, “but there should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate.” The president’s remarks, delivered in a packed chamber of the United Nations General Assembly, were broadly aimed at marshaling more than 100 world leaders to confront climate change. But his words at a United Nations climate summit were directly focused on putting the onus on China, an essential partner of the United States if a global climate treaty is to be negotiated by 2015.
Nonetheless, he warned that the efforts would fail without significant cooperation from countries around the world. “We can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing alike,” the president said. “Nobody gets a pass.” Unless Beijing and Washington can resolve their differences, climate experts said, few other countries will agree to the treaty and it will likely founder.
“Today, I call on all countries to join us, not next year or the year after that, because no nation can meet this global threat alone,” he said. Mr. Obama made clear that after he took the political risks, in June, of proposing a far-reaching Environmental Protection Agency regulation to force American power plants to curb their carbon emissions, he now expected the Chinese to do likewise.
The daylong climate summit meeting, organized by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, showcased how climate change has become a genuinely global preoccupation, but also reinforced the divides between developed and developing countries. There were indications that China might be ready with its own plan, although many experts say they will be skeptical until Chinese officials reveal the details. The decision of President Xi Jinping of China to skip the summit also sent a less-than-enthusiastic message.
Mr. Obama promoted an executive action he announced this year that mandates cutting pollution from the nation’s power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. He said the United States would meet its previous pledge to reduce the nation’s overall carbon emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. But a senior Chinese official sent in Mr. Xi’s place said his country would try to reach a peak level of carbon emissions “as early as possible.” That suggested that the Chinese government, struggling with air pollution so extreme that it has threatened economic growth, regularly kept millions of children indoors and ignited street protests, was determined to show faster progress in curbing emissions. “As a responsible major developing country, China will make an even greater effort to address climate change and take on international responsibilities that are commensurate with our national conditions,” said the official, Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, who addressed the chamber after Mr. Obama.
Reciting record-setting temperatures and a litany of natural disasters, from hurricanes and wildfires to droughts and floods, Mr. Obama tried to raise the sense of urgency surrounding climate change at a United Nations meeting dominated by fears of terrorism. The president and Mr. Zhang met briefly at the summit on Tuesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech. In his remarks, Mr. Obama told the chamber that he had pressed Mr. Zhang on the urgency for both countries to take the lead, and noted that he and the Chinese president had already reached an accord to cut the use of hydrofluorocarbons, a potent category of greenhouse gases.
“We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it,” Mr. Obama said. The United States, he said, would meet a pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2020 — a goal that is in large part expected to be met through the proposed E.P.A. regulation. Now, Mr. Obama said, the United States is preparing ambitious new targets to cut emissions further by 2050, with specifics to be made public ahead of a global climate summit in Paris in 2015. Other nations are expected to submit their own plans. With its surging use of coal, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter. But in the past year, as thousands of Chinese have protested the reliance on coal and its contribution to some of the world’s dirtiest air, Chinese authorities have signaled they intend to adopt policies to reduce the use of coal.
Much of the attention at this summit meeting has focused on China, the world’s largest carbon emitter. President Xi Jinping chose not to attend the meeting. Instead, he sent Zhang Gaoli, his vice premier, who presented his own figures to make the case that China was doing its part. “We’ve been working hard on this plan, looking at what kind of changes we will make to industry,” Junfeng Li, director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy, said in an interview.
China’s carbon intensity, Mr. Zhang said, is down 28 percent this year from 2005 levels; renewable energy accounts for 24 percent of China’s installed capacity; and the nation is on track to meet its goal of reducing emissions 40 percent to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Mr. Junfeng said his center had prepared “multiple choice” options for a proposed climate plan, and that Beijing would choose one to put forth based on their perceived stringency of the American plan for emissions cuts by 2050.
“As a responsible major developing country, China will make an even greater effort to address climate change and take on international responsibilities that are commensurate with our national conditions,” Mr. Zhang said. In recent years, the Chinese government has sent other signals about addressing carbon pollution, some of them encouraging to environmental experts. It has created seven regional cap-and-trade plans aimed at cutting carbon pollution from coal plants, and in August, a Chinese government official suggested that China is exploring the possibility of a national cap-and-trade plan.
As a political display, the parade of speeches was part of the largest gathering of world leaders ever devoted to climate change. It followed a march of more than 400,000 people in New York on Sunday, the largest political demonstration on climate change. “Five years ago, it was almost unimaginable to discuss China putting a cap on carbon, but now that is happening,” said Lo Sze Ping, chief executive officer of the World Wildlife Fund’s office in Beijing. “Chinese leaders have seen that it is imperative to move toward a low-carbon economy.”
“We need to take action now to limit global temperature rise,” said Mr. Ban, the United Nations secretary general, in opening the session. “We need all hands on deck to ride out this storm.” The modest Chinese steps are ahead of some other major polluters who are unlikely to submit emission-cuts plans ahead of 2015. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia remains an outspoken skeptic of climate-change science and voters in Australia recently repealed a national carbon tax. India, the world’s third-largest carbon polluter, has so far resisted outside pressure to cut its coal use, although under its newly-elected president, Narendra Modi, it has begun researching a plan. Without new climate policies, India is projected to surge ahead of the United States and China in carbon emissions in coming years.
But neither marches nor speeches yield policy. And now, in world capitals, the hard work of translating rhetoric into government action will get underway — or, in some cases, will not. For Mr. Obama, the climate summit was the first time he had spoken to such a gathering, with a significant carbon-cutting plan to his credit. In urging other countries to take steps, Mr. Obama pointed to his E.P.A. regulation to cut carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the No. 1 source of greenhouse gases.
Experts say that in the coming months, the clearest indication of how serious governments are about following through on this week’s lofty pledges will be whether they quickly harness teams of economists, energy experts and data analysts to draft aggressive new energy plans — and then work to build political support for such plans. “There should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate,” he said. “We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to combat it.”
The aim of this week’s talks is to start efforts to broker a deal next year in Paris that will bind the world’s largest carbon polluters — the United States, Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and others — to enacting laws to cap their use of the coal that supplies billions of people with cheap electricity, and the oil and gasoline that fuel the planet’s cars and trucks. Mr. Obama, who sought to erase years of skepticism abroad about American resolve to tackle climate change, reminded his audience that his action carried a political cost: at home, Republicans and the coal industry deride the new rules as a “war on coal” and an energy tax.
That means enacting politically controversial policies such as taxing carbon pollution, creating market-based “cap and trade” programs, or setting new regulations. Reciting a litany of record-setting temperatures and natural disasters, from hurricanes and wildfires to droughts and floods, Mr. Obama warned that the climate was changing faster than the world’s response to it. Recent efforts to curb the problem, he said, would fail without more cooperation from countries around the world.
Climate-change experts generally expressed enthusiasm about Mr. Obama’s speech, noting that it was the first time the United States had addressed such a gathering after instituting sweeping measures of its own. “We can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing alike,” the president said. “Nobody gets a pass.”
“You have to act domestically to have any credibility with international partners on this issue,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate and energy program at the World Resources Institute. If strong carbon-cutting policies are not enacted quickly, scientists warn, the current trajectory of fossil fuel emissions will raise temperature of the global atmosphere by two degrees Celsius, a tipping point that is projected to lead to a future of rising sea levels, extreme droughts and food shortages, floods, deluges and more powerful storms.
To reach a deal by the end of 2015, United Nations officials said countries must unveil concrete plans by April 1 that are to specify how they will cut their energy-related fossil fuel pollution after 2020. To be taken seriously, the plans must show how the governments will enforce disruptive shifts to their economies, transitioning away from the fossil fuels that have powered their homes and vehicles for a century.
Scientists said they were encouraged by the prospect of new climate policies, but warned that for now, the efforts under discussion will not be enough to prevent the first ravages of climate change.
“In the world that we live in, this is probably the best we can do right now,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. “It’s worth the effort. But it’s not going to solve the problem. It’s not going to get us to two degrees. It‘s not even enough to stave off three degrees.”