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Michael A. Levy
Cap-and-trade legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions appears to be dead in this
One month before the Copenhagen global climate talks at the end of last year, the United States was in a bind. It had not passed climate legislation and was balking at making any promises at the conference. The stage was being set for the United States to be blamed for any failure in the negotiations.
Washington recovered with two surprising promises. It said it would cut emissions by roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, a number that was based on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that had passed the House last year. Others found that target lacking, but applauded the United States for putting itself on the line. Failure to pass cap-and-trade will make it more difficult to hit that target. But I suspect there are a variety of alternative ways of achieving it. Analysts and lawmakers are going to need to do some searching on that front.
The second U.S. promise in Copenhagen was more pivotal. On the next-to-last day of the summit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised that the United States would help raise up to
The U.S. share of that
The most immediate international climate priority for the United States, then, is to shore up its diplomatic position on delivering financing for developing nations' climate change measures. Anything that
The United States spent the better part of the last decade being pilloried for its lack of action on climate. The last year and a half has seen a new attitude from much of the rest of the world. International observers have watched the U.S. political debate with growing skepticism over whether Washington could ever deliver cap-and-trade, but they have still held out hope. The sharp setback to the
Michael A. Levy is the Council on Foreign Relations' David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, and director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change
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Gloom Awaits U.S. Climate Diplomacy