US position shows climate change issue more politicised

Copenhagen : The US position on climate change altered the entire UN conference in Copenhagen. What's unclear is why it was not stated more clearly from the beginning of the marathon meetings. The answer lies somewhere between global wishful thinking and international power politics.

The expectations that US President Obama has raised on the streets may mislead the general public into believing that he can perform miracles. Many civil society organisations and even governments may have hoped for such intervention on the very last day of the UN climate change summit. But Obama's hands were tied long before.

The US is not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which is a key to all negotiations about climate change. The other key is the UN climate change convention document. Many may ask why the US does not sign on Kyoto like everyone else. The simple reason is that it's a non-starter for any US politician.

Some figures will help clarify: 60 votes are required to pass an international treaty in the US Senate. There are now 53 votes in favour of a US energy climate bill. To ratify a treaty, 67 votes are needed. When the Clinton/Gore administration was pushing for climate change bills, they knew Kyoto would not be passed.

After George W. Bush nailed the coffin closed on Kyoto, Obama would not even try to pry it open again. With Senate elections in 2010 and the US commitment to cut a maximum of 17 per cent of carbon emissions (below the 20 per cent proposed at COP15), Obama chose to go down another path.

Obama knows he cannot get the votes needed to ratify Kyoto, but he also knows that there is bi-partisan consensus between Democrats and Republicans about maintaining international competitiveness with the massive emerging economies of China and India. Hence the shift from concentrating on cutting carbon emissions, which raises the cost of doing business substantially, to pledging funds to developing countries on the condition that they provide full transparency of their emission cuts.

As China made perhaps too clear, the US bears a certain historical responsibility (along with other industrialised countries) for the current climate crunch. China also refused, rightly or not, to have internationally-imposed monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) mechanisms.

Neither leading global emitter ceded.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported the European pledge to try to raise some $100 billion (Dh367.8 billion) a year until 2020 for developing countries. There would be no legally binding agreement on carbon cuts.