On November 11, during his visit to China, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping jointly announced a landmark agreement on climate change that sets ambitious carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction targets for each country.
Under the agreement, the United States will double its current pollution reduction, which so far has seen CO2 emissions fall roughly 10 percent below 2005 levels. The new target will be a reduction of 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. China has pledged to reach peak CO2 emissions “around 2030” and to “increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent.”
A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s number one and number two carbon polluters, respectively, is seen as essential to concluding a new global accord on emissions reductions at the United Nations Climate Conference scheduled to take place in Paris from November 30 to December 11, 2015. The European Union has already endorsed a 40 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030.
In making the announcement, President Obama said the U.S. emissions reduction goal was “ambitious but achievable.” He added, “This is a major milestone in U.S.– China relations and shows what is possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.”
Environmentalists and public officials immediately weighed in with starkly different reactions to the agreement. Former Vice President Al Gore called it “a major step forward in the global effort to solve the climate crisis” that demonstrates “a serious commitment by the top two global polluters.”
Senator Barbara Boxer, the former Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said, “Now there is no longer an excuse for Congress to block action on climate change. The biggest carbon polluter on our planet, China, has agreed to cut back on dangerous emissions.”
On the other side of the aisle, the Senator Mitch McConnell (KY-R) (then in line to be Senate Majority Leader) criticized the deal, saying that it “requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years, while these carbon emission regulations are creating havoc in my State and other States across the country.”
Speaker of the House John Boehner (OH-R) called the agreement “the latest example of the President’s crusade against affordable, reliable energy that is already hurting jobs and squeezing middle-class families.”
Senator Jim Inhofe (OK-R), then the incoming Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said, “It’s hollow and not believable for China to claim it will shift 20 percent of its energy to non-fossil fuels by 2030, and a promise to peak its carbon emissions only allows the world’s largest economy to buy time.”
While there is little opponents in Congress can do to derail the agreement with China, lawmakers who oppose the President’s climate change policies are planning to use their majority position to scale back Environmental Protection Agency regulations on carbon dioxide from power plants.
For more background on this and related issues, see the January 2004 issue of Congressional Digest on “Climate Change,” the March 2007 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Global Warming,” and the December 2009 issue of International Debates on “The Road to Copenhagen.”
