By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.

Staff Writer

Washington - A major international climate conference that begins December 7 in Copenhagen presents an opportunity for the United States and the world to show a firm commitment to meeting the challenge that climate change presents, a senior U.S. diplomat says.

"The choice we face is not between simply continuing with business as usual and a somewhat cleaner, greener future," Todd Stern, the State Department's special envoy for climate change, said in prepared congressional testimony November 4. "If we continue on our high carbon and high emissions pathway, we will put at risk our economy, the health and safety of our environment, and our national security."

The U.S. Senate is considering a climate and energy bill that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and support new methods for fueling homes and vehicles with fewer carbon dioxide emissions. The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the legislation earlier this year.

The 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will include representatives from 192 nations, will be held December 7-18 in Copenhagen. The climate accord to be developed at the Copenhagen meeting will be a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent by 2012. The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and rejected that target because it made no demands on major developing countries.

"Nothing the United States can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean energy legislation as soon as possible," Stern testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Committee Chairman Howard Berman agreed that delaying passage of key legislation would limit the negotiating flexibility of the United States in Copenhagen because Congress has yet to provide clear guidance on emissions levels and related issues.

"In June, the House passed legislation that would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels and provide assistance for poor countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change, develop clean energy technologies and reduce emissions from deforestation," Berman said.

Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the senior Republican on the committee, said the president has made clear his desire to try to reach what is being billed as a historic agreement to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol.

"However, there is growing concern about the implication of such an agreement. Many of the proposals already put forward in the name of fighting global climate change contain provisions that, if adopted, would do great harm to U.S. interests," Ros-Lehtinen said.

Ros-Lehtinen also said that many of the proposals being discussed are so sweeping that the U.S. economy would have to be restructured to achieve many of their goals. "No credible estimate of the actual [costs] to our economy in terms of money, lost jobs, and reduced economic output have been put forward," she added.

President Obama met with European Union leaders at the White House November 3. A declaration released after the meeting pledged that at the Copenhagen meeting the United States and the European Union would work together for "an agreement that aspires to a global goal of a 50 percent reduction of global emissions by 2050, and reflects the respective midterm mitigation efforts of all major economies, both developed and emerging." The declaration also recognized the scientific view that global temperatures should not exceed an average of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

"All of us agreed that it was imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with what is a potential ecologic disaster," Obama said in a press briefing with the European Union officials.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)

ENDS