Climate Envoy Todd Stern says the U.S. hasn't abandoned the 2C target. Photo: Naturvernforbundet via Flickr
by Andrew Light and Adam James
This past Tuesday, Todd Stern, America’s top climate diplomat at the Department of State, was compelled to clarify comments he made last week at Dartmouth College on the global goal of limiting temperature increase caused by climate change to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F). Several commentators, including our former CAP colleague Brad Johnson on this blog, raised concerns that it signaled a reversal of a commitment the U.S. has had since 2009 to the 2C goal. Stern denied this assertion in no uncertain terms: “Of course, the U.S. continues to support this goal; we have not changed our policy.”
While it’s heartening to have the 2C goal reaffirmed by our chief climate envoy, it’s unfortunate that he had to do so. Only a very selective and skewed reading of this speech should set off any alarms. What Stern actually said at Dartmouth doesn’t even register as a gaffe.
Stern’s comments in the Dartmouth speech on the 2C target are relatively minor. They comprise a very small portion of a much more broad-ranging speech which includes, among other topics: current evidence of the disastrous impacts of rising temperatures around the world, the ideological divide over concern about climate change in the U.S., the Obama administration’s efforts to lower domestic emissions without comprehensive energy legislation, the nuances and challenges of climate diplomacy in a forum where consensus must be reached by 194 countries, and options for reducing emissions among smaller coalitions of the willing.
On the 2C target, Stern only challenges the likelihood that building a top-down international treaty, which divided up the allocation of emissions reductions country by country to stabilize temperature at 2C, would actually work. For various reasons, mostly concerning national self-interest, he favors a “more flexible approach” which would start with bottom-up nationally derived policies and then instead take the challenge to be to “increase the overall ambition” to stabilize at 2C with a hoped-for boost by future innovations in clean energy technology.
If this part of Stern’s speech is minor, the U.S. commitment to the 2C target is quite important even if progress toward that goal is lagging. The endorsement of this target was the first major shift in international climate policy that the Obama administration embraced, signaling a complete break with the approach taken by the Bush administration which had isolated us in the international climate negotiations.
The 2C target was first endorsed by President Obama himself in the leader’s declaration emerging from July 2009 G-8 summit in L’Aquila Italy. In fact, the leaders statement wound up endorsing a stronger statement than what was originally proposed. An earlier draft had stipulated that holding temperature increase at 2C over pre-industrial levels was “aspirational.” The final statement removed this proviso signaling a newly unified position by the richest developed countries in the world.
Later that year, the 2C target was repeated and endorsed by most of the 194 parties in the U.N.’s official climate negotiations in Copenhagen, including a last minute personal push by President Obama, and the rest of the U.S. climate team led by Todd Stern. Five countries however kept the “Copenhagen Accord” from becoming official given the defacto consensus rule governing any agreement in this process. But the 2C target, and a lot more by way of architecture for a regime for measuring progress on emission reduction, was enshrined the following year in the Cancun Agreements in the same process.
Now, there are many reasons to criticize these statements and agreements as not doing near enough to actually help to reduce the world’s greenhouse gas pollution and, indeed, ensure that the 2C target will be met. But one cannot deny that they are nonetheless important pieces of international diplomacy in themselves. The U.S. can’t easily reverse course on the 2C target any more than it could announce tomorrow that it was pulling out of the U.N. climate negotiations altogether. Since the president put his own credibility on the line in forging the language of these agreements, he’d have to provide some explanation to other global leaders.
It would, in short, be a diplomatic train-wreck for our chief climate negotiator to announce a reversal of the US position in a speech like this one. So, it should be no surprise that he didn’t do any such thing.
Nonetheless, we’ll play along. Suppose it was Stern’s intention to quietly float the idea of backing away from 2C on a pleasant August day in New Hampshire outside of the media spotlight, to “road test” it for the future. If that was Stern’s position then this particular speech would have been the wrong vehicle.
At the beginning of the speech, well before Stern challenges the idea that a top-down treaty can deliver on the 2C target, he discusses eight separate impacts of rising temperatures which should serve as a wake up call for anyone who now doubts the reality of anthropogenic climate change, ranging from the 2010 Pakistani floods, to this year’s Colorado wildfires, to ice melt in Greenland. He concludes with a warning: “And remember, these events are what we’re seeing with only a modest global temperature increase – about 1.3° F since 1900 – compared to the much larger increases we will see if we don’t take strong action.” So now we’re to believe that the real point of the speech is to reverse-course on the U.S. endorsement of the 2C target? Interesting. Maybe next week Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood will argue for eliminating federal highway speed limits by first iterating the number of traffic fatalities at current limits.
The real problem that critics are having here is with Stern’s approach to forging an international climate agreement. For well-rehearsed reasons, most people in the environmental community prefer a treaty like the Kyoto Protocol that, crudely put, sets an overall target for emission reductions, allocates to each signatory party a portion of those reductions to be responsible for, and then leaves it to them to form a national policy to meet their agreed upon obligation. Stern thinks there is little or no hope that we’ll create a global treaty that looks like Kyoto which can actually meet a 2C goal – much more ambitious than the goals of the Kyoto treaty – because too many parties will disagree on the allocation of responsibility for reducing emissions. We agree with him on this point.
Regardless of the disagreement one would have on the legal form of a new climate treaty with any of us, Stern’s position here does not seem to be downplaying the importance or the possibility of hitting a 2C target. In fact, he uses the importance of hitting a 2C target as the rationale for criticizing the current negotiation process. Take the line that is causing the most concern now among many of our friends:
This kind of flexible, evolving legal agreement [which Stern prefers] cannot guarantee that we meet a 2 degree goal, but insisting on a structure that would guarantee such a goal will only lead to deadlock.
Why bother mentioning a 2 degree goal if the US doesn’t think it is important anymore? Charitably read, the claim is that no international agreement will ever guarantee a particular outcome. At best it will be structured smartly enough to compel all parties to achieve a desired outcome rather than breaking out of the agreement altogether.
This is a good lesson for us all to keep in mind, particularly given the questionable success of the Kyoto Protocol. Just after the Durban climate negotiations last December, Canada announced that they will not meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. While this came as no surprise to those following the actions of the Harper government since coming into power, it’s still an object lesson of the sort of thing we don’t want to tee up for a more ambitious global treaty that needs to include the fastest growing carbon polluters in the developing world.
Finally, Stern ends this part of the Dartmouth speech with a plea to move beyond the turgid waters of the UN climate negotiations to reduce emissions in other ways. This is the actual punch line to the international portion of this address. What can we practically do to move forward? He begins:
Now I want to shift gears slightly. As much as we need to make the UN climate regime work effectively and promote aggressive, real-world action, we also need to recognize that it can’t do everything. So we should expand the field of international engagement to include other, more informal groupings of countries prepared to act in ways that can make a difference. The point of such coalitions is not to negotiate agreements, debate the meaning of treaty clauses or grandstand about the imagined sins of our rivals, but to act. To produce results. To get something done. And efforts like these are starting.
Stern goes on to highlight efforts like the new Climate and Clean Air Coalition, now comprised by some 20 countries and 10 non-state partners to take on short-lived climate forcers, especially methane, black carbon, and HFCs, which now “account for over 30% of current global warming, millions of premature deaths, and extensive crop losses.” Again, if the point of this speech was to float an abandonment of the commitment to the 2C target, and a new dismissive stance on international climate policy out of touch with reality, as some have put it, then this speech is a flop.
The validity of Stern’s preferred “flexible” approach to structuring a new climate treaty is a discussion for another day. The worries about the US commitment to the 2C target, whether it is achievable at this point or not, are unnecessary and unhelpful.
Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow and Director of International Climate Policy, and Adam James is a Special Assistant, at the Center for American Progress.
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I am glad the US is not moving away from the 2 degree target. But this piece scolds those of us who are concerned about Stern’s comments and the Obama administrations commitment as if we are silly school children.
Stern’s comments were incredibly mumbled and unclear and he is a spokesperson for an administration who does not even publicly mention climate change when meeting the 2 degree target will require a massive transformation of the global economy. Those of us who questioned the Obama administration’s intentions were being very reasonable and the final suggestion that – “The worries about the US commitment to the 2C target, whether it is achievable at this point or not, are unnecessary and unhelpful” – is utterly ridiculous.
Do you fellows read the science?
Well said Richard. The 2 C target is a political check off that the current (and probably future) Democratic administrations have to say they are seriously working towards, even if they aren’t (as the current administration isn’t) – as its politically impossible for them to say the truth (since it would so anger and alienate a big chunk of their voters)….so they’ll smile, salute, do the charade and say “yes nation” we take that seriously, we’re on it and then go right back doing what they can’t be doing if they actually took that goal seriously – utter hypocrites.
We get to wait till climate change effects become a serious and sustained crisis (a lot worse than just high corn prices) here in the U.S. so that the powers in Washington preventing action get shoved aside, but that seems very far from here.
Apparently they don’t read the founding documents of the negotiations.
They make a grand claims of Obama
“. . . signaling a complete break with the approach taken by the Bush administration . . .”
and:
“The 2C target was first endorsed by President Obama himself in the leader’s declaration emerging from July 2009 G-8 summit in L’Aquila Italy. ”
This is untrue – the 2.0C target was agreed in the text of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change in May 1992, as was formally signed by the US.
Regards,
Lewis
Really? The 2C target is in the 1992 founding document? You can look at it at this link and you won’t find any such reference or stipulation: http://www.pointcarbon.com/research/carbonmarketresearch/post2012library/otherkeydocuments/1.1223464?&ref=searchlist
We certainly read science, did you read the Dartmouth speech? The speech starts with climate science and ends with the need for global transformations need to take practical steps to move forward. You can disagree with the strategies Stern prefers as much as you want but trying to pin on Stern the idea that he was using this speech to back away from the 2C target is a willful misreading.
The premise that 2 degrees will be ‘safe’ is now considered ridiculous. At only 0.8 degrees above the PI levels we are seeing the beginning of hell and high water. Going to even 1.5 degrees – double what we are today will be disastrous.
World leaders continue to fiddle about- while the warming in the pipeline grows like an unstoppable monster.
Absolutely.
Recent climate behavior makes it quite clear that the two-degree target is way off the mark. Check out the recent megastorm over the Arctic.
If we don’t slam on the brakes NOW — and it’s doubtful that we’ll even touch them — we’re headed over the cliff in the near future — things could easily be out of control by the end of this decade. Time to stop dithering an start moving on climate measures.
Murky and disingenuous. Let us be clear about one thing – the reason there is no agreement is that the USA has steadfastly refused to accept responsibility for its historical emissions which have caused huge damage to the planet, long before countries such as China and India began to industrialize. No amount of diplomatic double talk can disguise the fact that the USA wants to continue eating cake while millions starve, ME
Merrelyn – Well said.
Given that the US could perfectly well have proposed, or got a client to propose, a global afforestation program back in the Kyoto talks as a means for all nations to verifiably recover their historic carbon emissions by an agreed date, and thus could have extracted this log from the jam, we need to ask just why they’ve not done so.
As a US budget item it would be a chickenfeed cost per year, but, it could have given the negotiations an unwelcome momentum.
So the real question is, if the US won’t initiate this change, which nation will ?
Regards,
Lewis
Precisely Lewis. On the question of who will push the process along, in your posting below, you mention several of the groups who have been demanding greater, faster action. We are rapidly getting to the point where it is not a question of leadership but of neutralizing the USA. As the PNG rep said directly to the US years ago – was it Bali? – “either lead or get out of the way.” ME
tl;dr. Unconvinced. And why is the Federal Government selling coal leases for $1.10 per ton when CO2 damage is closer to $80 per ton?
If McKibben’s figures are correct, taking the 2 degree target seriously would mean leaving 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. The actions of the Obama administration facilitating new leases, exploration and infrastructure for fossil fuel extraction are strong empirical evidence that any allegiance they profess for the 2 degree target is lip service.
Yes, McKibben’s numbers are right. For more details, see http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/14/464584/why-fossil-fuel-abundance-is-an-illusion-unless-your-goal-is-humanitys-self-destruction/
Two degrees is pretty much blown already.
Firstly there are some significant lags, we are now seeing the result of CO2 changes from a decade or two ago.
Secondly there is significant masking by aerosols. As we stop burning stuff, those aerosols will wash out.
Keeping on as we are will not the the bounds of a pleasant climate, that boundary is well smashed. Keep on as we are and we will push the bounds of the survivability of mankind.
We have the potential to make ourselves extinct. Do we really want to continue with this experiment.
Rabid, great comment. We must pay attention to the aerosol factor keeping global temps lower than atmospheric concentrations of GHGs warrant. It is the greatest short-term positive feedback out there.
Your point about diminished fossil fuel use is right on point as far as unleashing the pent-up warming is concerned. Its as if the Clan Air Act and reduced fossil fuel use are working against our survival. This deserves a post but I don’t think David Hawkins would be interested in writing it.
From David Wadsell’s paper on climate sensitivity:
“The most significant boundary in climate dynamics is the strength of the feedback factor at which the system behaviour crosses the critical threshold between equilibrium-seeking and self-amplifying outcomes. This is the tipping point at the boundary of runaway climate change.”
Diminished aerosols leads to another feedback and triggers more and different feedbacks..
Underlying this discussion is the difficulty of meeting the 2C goal because of all the American and international reports indicating we may be headed above 2C at today’s concentration (approx. 400 ppm, co2 and above 450 ppm,equivalent).
For example, Dr. J. Hansen’s (NASA) measurement of earth’s present energy imbalance is 0.58 watt/square meter, and net radiative forcing is apparently 1.6 w/m2. Those facts would seem to indicate an unfavorable trend toward substantial temperature increase (resulting from past emissions, not future ones).
Reply
The “it’s a serious problem” part of Mr. Stern’s speech was excellent, but that does not change the fact that the US position on 2C is hype. If it were not hype, we’d be on a war footing, people would have victory gardens, and there’d be flag waving praise for carpoolers and solar installers.
There is a lot to be said for the need to bring China into the mitigation game in the same degree.
The way to do that is not via endless talk but to just do it ourselves, and go “all in” to make it happen. Then let the Chinese boycotts and divestments start until they have a negative emissions growth rate also. Sure, China holds a ton of our bonds and stuff. So…. let the chips fall. And they are going to fall. We can take the economic lumps of making the moral choices, or take the ecological ones of making the irrational ones.
Aside from the “Its a serious issue” parts of Mr. Stern’s speech, Long and James’ defense of the speech leave me utterly unconvinced.
Yes, the original posting included here at Climate Progress was an exaggeration, as I noted in blog comments here at the time.
So much for the big do-loop. Shall we get back to work now?
I agree, let’s get back to work on the hard issues people have raised in these comments. This issue of the Dartmouth speech is a distraction.
The stated position that we still adhere to the 2C goal is fundamentally incompatible with the President’s energy policy.
Consequently Stern’s comments — viewed as the position of the U.S. government — amount to lip service. The administration is saying one thing, but doing something else.
Aren’t we already committed to somewhere like 4-6C warming in the pipeline? David Wasdell highlighted this in his recent paper on climate sensitivity and feedback dynamics.
Forget this fantasy 2C figure and lets start talking about the big clean up. We need to draw down CO2, not chat about how we can reduce the amount we are putting up there.
The sky-fill site is is overflowing and starting to blow… when it goes, we go too!
In dreams, with knowledge that energy fuels economies, economies fuel re-elections, and renewable energies cannot yet replace fossils, I convince myself that a second Obama term will bring a concerted effort – yea, a wartime effort – with a new founded dynamism combating AGW, making for a safe future for his girls and my grandkids. Then I awake, peer through sleep’s fog, diminishing slowly with the first cup o’Joe, and I wonder: If leaders will not lead, can leaders be made to follow. A pair of ducks if ever there were one.
Did you wake up in a cold sweat thinking about 60 votes in the Senate?
you need 60 Senators that vote for green energy, not the 5 or 6 Dems that always vote with their State’s fossil interests.
And you need 5 Justices in the SCOTUS.
Dennis,
What a question to ponder as I pour my second cup o’ Joe and try not to lapse into an immobilizing state of depression/learned helplessness!
You have begun what should be a song, those words look like the start of lyrics to a folk song— could be the theme song for this election–the chorus being:
“If leaders will not lead, can leaders be made to follow?”
A key question would be —-what are leaders being asked to follow? Money, power, ego-centric fulfillment?
Or
A path of peace, universal justice, reverence for the natural world and all those who inhabit it?
Is there enough of a critical mass that wants to lead in the direction of the latter even if we could find a leader who has the capacity to see . . hear . . feel . . act with bravery, compassion and wisdom for all of humanity and the earth?
Carol
I nominate Carol!
History tells us such leaders do not seek power (in the conventional sense), they just act with the highest personal integrity to do what must be done. In Starhawk’s terms, they lead using “power with” as opposed to “power over”. Our conventional leaders, all trained to power over, are highly unlikely to follow a mass power-with movement, and if there’s any hope for meaningful mitigation, it lies entirely in the latter, IMO.
Over the years I’ve tracked CP articles and discussion, I’ve appreciated Brad Johnson’s many posts as being consistently clear, well informed and insightful. His post on Stern’s speech was no exception.
By contrast, those of Andrew Light that I’ve read here and elsewhere have consistently been just the party line, with resort to pretty tedious methods to try to win credence. For instance, in telling us that:
“Only a very selective and skewed reading of this speech should set off any alarms. What Stern actually said at Dartmouth doesn’t even register as a gaffe” – he not only impugns Brad’s integrity, he also insults the reader’s intelligence.
Are we to believe that one of the US most senor diplomats and his handpicked team are so incompetent that despite the standard practice of consulting on drafts of any public speech by a diplomat of Stern’s rank, nobody noticed that it implied, very clearly, that the ‘guidepost’ of 2.0C was being discarded and the US interest in a global treaty terminated ? American diplomacy may not do subtlety very well, but it just doesn’t do mistakes that obvious.
Given the relevance of the 2.0C target, I spoke to a contact in Whitehall whom I rarely bother. He was much amused by the kerfuffle Stern’s speech has caused – apparently rather a lot of calls have been made to Washington from rather a lot of capitals. According to the grapevine, at one pole they concerned the serious self-limitation that renouncing the treaty and the target would cost the US, while at the other they gave rather blunter warnings of joint diplomatic responses.
He foresaw that Stern would be told to claim he’d been misunderstood, and suggested I watch the media and blogs to see who tries to sell this line.
Dare I suggest Andrew Light and Adam James?
This is all interesting but it doesn’t reply to the substantive claims that we made in this piece. If the point of this speech was either to directly or indirectly back off from the embrace of the 2C target then why on Earth would Stern structure the speech the way that he did? You can fairly criticize what this administration or congress is or is not doing to actually contribute to meeting the 2C target. What is unfair is the kind of broadside that my friend Brad wrote about this speech.
To answer your question Andrew, he would structure his speech this way to play both sides of the field — in just this manner. This is what politicians do when they don’t want to do anything: make a speech that allows them to claim all sides of an issue.
Where is the evidence, other than lip service, that this administration is committed to a 2C target? They are doing NOTHING that the scienctific community is very clearly, verly loudly, telling them that they need to do.
Excerpts from BBC Richard Black’s post:
- As I reported earlier this week, the comment went down very badly with the blocs pushing for faster action on climate change – the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) and the EU – with Marshall Islands minister Tony de Brum describing this flexibility as “a death sentence”.
Later, the African Group of countries weighed in, spokesman Seyni Nafo saying: “This is not a game with numbers; its a question of people’s lives, and so I am not sure there is much space for the ‘flexibility’ Mr Stern has spoken of.”
In the middle of this comment storm, Mr Stern’s office issued a statement designed to be a clarification.
“My view is that a more flexible approach will give us a better chance to actually conclude an effective new agreement and meet the goal we all share.”
I say the statement is “designed to be a clarification” because actually, I’m not sure it is.
. . . . as he acknowledges: “This kind of flexible, evolving legal agreement cannot guarantee that we meet a 2C goal.”
Which begs the question; what use is such an agreement if it doesn’t?
. . . . when Mr Stern advocates a negotiating process that “cannot guarantee” a 2C goal, one way of seeing that is as an acknowledgement that governments shouldn’t aim to fulfil the basic objective of the UN climate convention; which is obviously political dynamite. -
Fully respect everyone’s opinions. One point that seems to be lost in the shuffle is that the question addressed here isn’t “is the US on track to support the 2C target” or even “what is the best way to hit 2C.” The concerns everyone has raised on both those points are well stated. The question addressed here is whether or not the Administration has changed their position on the 2C target. They haven’t. The position of the U.S. government (right or wrong) has been that the way to hit a 2C target isn’t likely with a top down process- which is what Stern repeated in his speech. This is an opinion (right or wrong) which has also been echoed by much of the environmental community in the wake of every climate negotiation.
Andrew -
I’d agree that meeting the 2.0C target under a global climate treaty is unlikely so long as the US remains utterly inflexible in refusing to negotiate the date by which all nations’ allocations of tradable emissions rights converge from present volumes eventually to per capita parity.
By proposing at Copenhagen a larger percentage cut by 2050 for developed nations than for developing nations – which would in fact have left each American with more than twice the emission rights of each Chinese – Obama has already conceded the principle that the convergence of national emission rights is required.
Demanding that every other nation should now be ‘flexible’ and forgo the treaty doesn’t change this reality one jot. The only people being fooled are some of the American public, for some of the time.
Regards,
Lewis
These are good points. But my view is that structuring a treaty that meets the 2C target, on any allocation scheme, is impossible in a process that requires 194 parties to agree on the structure of the treaty. An appeal to “emissions rights,” “carbon budgets,” and such has little to 0 chance of helping to break this impasse because there is no formula all parties will agree on to represent the convergence of what they see as their national interests and responsibilities to others. Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. We ought to look for other ways to move to the emissions reductions needed.
Also, I wouldn’t say that Stern “demanded” that everyone be flexible. He was actually using this speech, in part, to make a case for the Australian “schedules” approach first floated in 2009 (check the text of the speech and you’ll see the reference). I suggest that literature is worth a deep dive by those interested in the various alternatives that could be used to create a new treaty.
When Gandhi set a goal, he achieved that goal by fully applying it to his own life without waiting to negotiate a treaty with the British (even burning his English clothing!)
When Welesa set a goal, he too acted to apply those goals to his movement without waiting to negotiate a treaty with the Soviets.
When ML King set a goal, he too applied it to his own life first without waiting to negotiate.
All three sought to negotiate early on, but all three demonstrated they really truly intended to achieve their goals by acting even though initial negotiations did not work.
We’ve been talking about mitigation for 30 years and have done relatively little. A biblical reference comes to mind:
From Matthew 7:
[H]ow can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
As I understand, the argument put forth in this post is that the US position has always been, and will continue to be, that we are gonna worry about others cleaning up their own act before we get serious about cleaning up our own.
That un-changing policy of hypocrisy leads direct to several passages from Revelations, describing the end of the world. Natural consequences, writ large.
*Insert several passages from Revelations
My grandfather used to say – “Talk’s cheap but it takes money to buy whiskey.”
Cue Jerry McGuire.
Well said, grandpa…
I submit that among the chief problems is, the world’s most influential nation, the United States, is providing no leadership — none — on this issue.
I think the negotiations would go further if the U.S. undertook to lead by example.
Cue the crickets.
Actually as the super power the US still is, they ought to lead the way. But in fact we have all the opposite of this, just like in an Orwellian nightmare. A systemic parasite situation in a complex world where most people hold on to conservative living standards – or tasks, which are not compatible in today’s fast evolving world. However the potential is lingering to change all that, and this is the hope which motivates us and let me hope for a miracle.
The sources of emissions that will cause the most damage to the climate are yet to be built (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5997/1330.abstract). If we want a really effective international climate treaty, we’ll want it to be something that China and India can sign on to, and immediately. So the next time you feel like waxing poetic on an idealistic international climate treaty that could guarantee 2C (which scientifically is impossible anyway… there’s too much uncertainty around emissions concentrations and the effect on average surface temperature change to “guarantee” a limit of 2 degree, no matter how rigorous your international system) ask yourself — “Would China and India [and 190 other countries] agree to this?”