From Dark to Light: Navigating the U.S. Energy-Climate Terrain

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About this Event

14 Jun 2011 @ 12:45

About the Speaker:

Eileen Claussen is one of the world’s most eminent climate policy-makers and President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Before founding the Pew Center in 1998, Ms Claussen served as President Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for Global Environmental Affairs and as his Special Adviser and Director of Environmental Affairs at the National Security Council. She is a former Director of Atmospheric Programs at the US Environmental Protection Agency, where she was instrumental in negotiating the successful UN Montreal Protocol to curb ozone depletion. She subsequently acted as Chair of the Montreal Protocol Fund.

About the Speech:

In her address, Eileen Claussen analysed the political dynamics of US Climate and Energy policy. Painting a rather gloomy picture, she spoke of the shift from the “heady” days of 2009, when Obama had just entered office and the House had just passed cap and trade legislation to the present, where “it is hard to see how anything substantive or serious can happen on the climate issue under the current Congress.” Numerous climate sceptics were elected in the 2010 congressional elections and there is now a “profound distaste” for so-called “big government solutions” or for anything that could be labeled “anti-jobs” (in spite of the arguments that cap and trade is a market-based mechanism and that addressing climate change will create clean energy and related jobs.) “Indeed, she said, “the challenge right now is to prevent Congress from endangering the mostly modest initiatives and programs that are in place right now to address this issue,” such as the disproportionate budget cuts for climate science and clean energy achieved by the House in February.

“Looking ahead,” she argued, “things could get worse before they get better. The period after the November 2012 elections could be the next best chance for the United States to do something serious on the climate issue. But if the House remains majority Republican, or the Senate falls into Republican hands, the chance will probably be lost for another two years or more.”

Claussen did point to some shadows of hope, however. These include: the steps being taken by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases; the expected replacement of many coal-fired power plants with natural gas; President Obama’s rhetorical commitment to climate change; the fact that the majority of Americans continue to believe in the science of global warming; and the fact that current Republican candidates for the 2012 election have supported cap and trade legislation in the past. This will make it difficult to make climate change a polarising issue in that campaign. She also spoke of various state-level initiatives and emphasised the strong support shown by many members of the business community for climate action.

Moving from the domestic to the international situation, Ms Claussen welcomed the incremental, ”evolutionary” progress on operational issues including finance, measurement, reporting and verification achieved at the UN climate talks in Cancún and encouraged the Durban talks to build on this approach “because the reality is that the U.S. cannot make global commitments until there is stronger consensus for action at home.”

This was the fourth event in the ESB ‘Energy Ireland’ lecture series.

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