All Eyes on the Uninvited at Climate Change Talks

[Mass]

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=1&docID=weeklyreport-000002634675

All Eyes on the Uninvited at Climate Change Talks
By Coral Davenport, CQ Staff

This week, representatives of more than 180 nations will meet on the Indonesian island of Bali to begin discussing a climate change agreement intended to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. But the delegation that will be the most closely watched will not even have an official seat at the table.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and their top aides plan to meet with attendees and affirm their commitment to participating in the next round of global efforts to cap carbon emissions.



The message will be sharply at odds with that of the official U.S. delegation, which consists of Bush administration officials who remain opposed to mandatory emissions curbs. It also will deviate from positions taken by past U.S. Congresses that deemed the 1995 Kyoto agreement onerous and unworkable.

But assurances from the congressional group — which will be led by Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee — will pack symbolic punch, coming little more than a year before President Bush leaves office and with Democrats firmly in control of Congress and hopeful they can regain the presidency.

The Democrats have made climate change a top-tier issue since they gained control of Congress, and they are promoting a bipartisan Senate plan that would mandate reducing greenhouse gas emissions 65 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Businesses that do not meet the limits could purchase pollution credits from other companies.

The plan closely resembles a cap already in place in European Union countries and is in line with what many other nations say they would like to see in the next global climate change treaty.

Environmentalists think that strong support from the congressional delegation will add momentum to efforts to build a new treaty, which attendees expect will be signed in 2009, a year after the next president is sworn in. The Bali talks run from Dec. 3 to Dec. 14.



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