US climate policy: Critics fail to see the bigger picture

Many have criticized the US climate policy that passed the House of Representatives last Friday. What they fail to realize is that the only alternative to the climate policy that passed was no climate policy at all.

Groups on both the right and the left of the climate debate have attacked the bill. Greenpeace called it “a tremendous loss for the American people and for the world.” The Financial Times called it, simply, “a mess.”

The dissatisfaction stems from compromises that were made to the bill in order to secure enough votes for its passage. First, the short-term reduction target was reduced from 20% below 2005 levels by 2020 to 17% to appease Democrats from fossil-fuel states. Then, a portion of the emission allowances were allocated for free to appease utilities and energy-intensive manufacturers. Last, authority over agricultural offset projects was given to the Department of Agriculture to appease Democrats from farm states.

It’s true that these compromises are not ideal. But these criticisms miss the larger point: the bill commits the US to reduce its emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 (equivalent to 80% below 1990 levels). This is the kind of commitment that was needed from the US. But getting a majority of US policymakers to support it amidst a recession was an incredible challenge.

The vote count tells the whole story. Even after all the compromises that were made, the bill only passed by a vote of 219-212 (216 votes are needed). This means that even if 4 additional Members of Congress felt their interests weren’t reflected, the bill would have failed.

Critics seem to assume that if the flawed bill failed, it would have led to an improved bill succeeding. But this assumption ignores history. The US legislative process is never kind to bold policies that reach their pinnacle and fail. In 1993, another popular Democratic US President, Bill Clinton, made universal health care the cornerstone of his first-term agenda. But when a compromise plan failed in the Senate, it was subsequently dropped from the legislative agenda, and led to a complete lack of confidence in universal health care as a concept. The US is just now revisiting the idea of universal health care 16 years later.

The truth is that if the Waxman-Markey bill failed to pass in the House last Friday, climate policy in the US would likely have been postponed by months, and probably much longer. This would have made it near impossible for President Obama to contribute tangibly to international negotiations this December in Copenhagen – once again causing the US to delay progress at the international level.

The compromises made were simply the political price paid to avoid this scenario and start reducing emissions in the US. Given the alternative, the flawed bill looks less like a “mess” and more like a “miracle.”

Evan Juska is the Senior Policy Manager for The Climate Group, an international, non-profit organisation, whose goal is to help government and business set the world economy on the path to a low-carbon, prosperous future. The Climate Group recently hosted a conference in North Dakota engaging businesses and federal lawmakers on climate change and led a delegation of Midwest state policymakers to Germany.