Obama tries to secure climate agreement, limited by Congress

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is trying to negotiate a legacy-making climate change agreement this coming week in Paris with one hand tied behind his back. Congress can’t even agree whether global warming is real.

Scientists point to the global deal, years in the making, as the last, best hope for averting the worst effects of global warming. Obama has spent months prodding other countries to make ambitious carbon-cutting pledges to the agreement, which he hopes will become the framework for countries to tackle the climate issue long beyond the end of his presidency in early 2017.

But Republicans have tried to undermine the president by sowing uncertainty about whether the US will follow up on its promises. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders have warned other countries not to trust any deal Obama may strike.

About 150 heads of state are set to join Obama for talks on Monday and Tuesday as the deal nears the finish line. The goal is to secure worldwide cuts to emissions of heat-trapping gases to limit the rise of global temperatures.

READ: Paris brings 150 leaders to climate meeting | Obama tells Apec: Let’s talk about climate change

A climate deal in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 1990s — which the US never ratified — spared developing countries such as China and India from mandatory emissions cuts, causing resentment in the US and other industrialized countries. The Paris agreement would be the first to involve all countries.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, leaders produced an agreement that fell far short of goals.

The concept behind a Paris pact is that the 170 or so nations already have filed their plans. They would then promise to fulfill their commitments in a separate arrangement to avoid the need for ratification by the Republican-run Senate.

But in the United States, the talks are entangled in the debate about whether humans really are contributing to climate change. Almost all Republicans oppose the steps Obama has taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions, arguing they will hurt the economy, shutter coal plants and eliminate jobs in power-producing states.

Half the states are suing the administration to try to block Obama’s unprecedented regulations to cut power plant emissions by roughly one-third by 2030. These states say Obama has exceeded his authority. If their lawsuit succeeds, Obama would find it difficult to deliver the 26 percent to 28 percent cut in overall US emissions by 2030 that he has promised as America’s contribution.

And Senate Republicans are working to block Obama’s request for the first installment of a $3 billion pledge to a UN fund to help countries adapt to climate change, a priority for poorer countries.

“In the end, we will not get to climate safety without the legislative branch participating,” said Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who heads Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

Republicans had argued that US action would be irrelevant as long as major emitters such as China were still polluting. The White House says Obama plans to highlight how developing countries are stepping up when he meets on the sidelines of the Paris talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has pledged to curb emissions, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Obama administration mostly has acted through executive power: proposing the carbon dioxide limits on power plants, which mostly affect coal-fired plants; putting limits on methane emissions; and ratcheting up fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which also cuts down on carbon pollution.

All of that is ambitious and serious, but probably not enough, said Jennifer Morgan of the nongovernmental organization World Resources Institute.