Brussels, 16/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - United States Special Envoy for Climate Change and Chief Negotiator in the climate talks spoke in Brussels on Tuesday 16 February of the US administration's determination to sign the Paris Accord.
The possible implications of the US Supreme Court decision to suspend President Obama's programme for clean energy, which would have required American power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions by 32% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, were the main focus of the discussions Stern had with European Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete (see EUROPE 11489). Stern is unperturbed and this for a number of reasons.
(1) “This isn't a major surprise”; (2) it is only a procedural suspension: “We are going to go ahead to sign this agreement this year”, he told the press; while he was unable to say whether President Obama would travel to New York in person for the signing on 22 April, it is definite that the agreement will be signed by someone at a very high level; (3) “We won't go back on our 2020 and 2025 targets” because President Obama “has been fighting for a number of years for very far-reaching regulation” on buildings, equipment, etc.
Neither does Stern believe that the Supreme Court decision will delay implementation of the legislation on clean power plants, which is not due to come into force before 2022. The Supreme Court can sometime impose “fixing part of the regulation”, he said, but “what we know is that the Supreme Court said the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has to regulate CO2, by the words of the Supreme Court itself. It's not going to say the EPA cannot regulate”.
In his view, it would be totally premature to think that the plan for clean power plants could be annulled. “We are sticking to our power plant plans and to our targets for 2020 and 2025”, he stressed.
When asked by a journalist if he thought it possible that, were a Republican president to be elected, everything could be overturned, Stern, while not ruling anything out, replied that undoing legislation of this sort, which was many years in the making, would be more complicated than adopting it. He pointed out, too, that, while many major companies would like to see the back of it, there are many, too, which want legal security.
Given that the Paris Accord is such a landmark and has broad acceptance across the globe, he felt that to turn one's back on it would be far worse than pulling out of the Kyoto agreement: “I can't imagine it”, he said.
“We did something very important in Paris. It's a historical agreement, the first universal, durable climate regime which sets a path of high ambition. 187 INDCs is, by itself, extraordinary”, he told the press. He hailed an agreement which reshaped the architecture in place since 1992, taking as its basis differentiation rather than the distinction between industrialised countries and the others, along with the INDCs, and offering the flexibility that developing countries need.
“We are now focusing on the follow-up on issues to be addressed this year and the following years”, he said. It is this spirit that he will also travel to London and Paris for discussions with his colleagues. As we go to press, his discussion with the commissioner is continuing. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)