Obama to pledge cut in greenhouse gases by about 17%

WASHINGTON — President Obama is pledging a provisional target for reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States, the first time in more than a decade a U.S. administration has offered even a tentative promise to reduce production of climate-altering gases, the White House announced Wednesday.

At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Obama will tell the delegates in person that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.

The figures reflect targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global-warming agreement with binding targets.

To underscore the importance his administration is placing on the initiative, Obama will travel to the U.N. talks to deliver the promise in hopes of spurring significant progress there. He will appear Dec. 9, near the beginning of the 12-day session, on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, officials said.

By making the pledge in an international forum, Obama is laying a bet that Congress will complete action on a climate bill next year and will be prepared to ratify an international agreement based on the commitment.

But White House officials acknowledged that those outcomes were uncertain. They will depend, in large measure, on whether the Democratic sponsors of the legislation can win 60 votes for a measure that is, at the moment, unpopular and whether major developing nations, notably China and India, deliver credible emissions-reduction pledges of their own.

Until now, the administration's negotiators have said they will not get ahead of Congress in making promises in an international forum, but Obama now, essentially, has adopted the targets of a climate and energy bill that passed the House in June.

The House bill aims at greenhouse-gas reductions of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and sharper cuts in the following decades, through a cap-and-trade system that includes most of the nation's major sources of carbon-dioxide emissions. Last month, a Senate committee passed a measure calling for a 20 percent cut by 2020, but that is expected to be weakened as the legislation moves through other Senate committees and onto the floor, perhaps next spring.

Obama has met over the past two weeks with the leaders of China and India, the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, to discuss climate change and the Copenhagen conference. U.S. officials said both countries told the president they would be prepared to announce steps to reduce the rate of growth of emissions if the United States puts a pledge on the table.

Neither has done so yet, although Chinese officials have hinted that they will announce a near-term target for reducing energy use relative to economic growth, or "carbon intensity," before the Copenhagen conference opens.

"Obviously, we hope other major economies will put forth ambitious action plans of their own," Carol Browner, the president's senior adviser for energy and climate change, said at a White House briefing Wednesday morning.

Under pressure

Obama, who had not previously committed either to emissions targets or to going to Copenhagen, has been under considerable pressure from other world leaders and environmental advocates to reassert U.S. leadership on climate change.

Obama came to office promising to end eight years of relative inaction on climate change under the Bush administration, but the inaction of Congress has limited the administration's ability to negotiate with other nations. At the Kyoto climate conference in 1997, the Clinton administration joined other industrialized nations in pledging to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 5.2 percent by 2012, but Congress refused to ratify the agreement because it made no demands of developing nations.

Many foreign leaders, particularly those in European nations that have been more aggressive in dealing with climate change, have become critical of Obama's seeming passivity on the issue. The White House appears to hope that the announcement of the targets and the trip to Copenhagen will quiet some of the dissension and help Obama re-establish U.S. leadership on what he calls one of the signature issues of the time.

Obama said recently he would attend the session if his presence could help lead to a successful outcome. It is significant that he will appear at the beginning rather than at the end of the 12-day meeting. Most major decisions at such environmental talks come in the closing days.

"By putting a serious number for U.S. emission reductions on the table, the president has just called the world's bet and then raised it for our negotiating partners," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a co-sponsor of the House legislation.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a co-sponsor of the Senate legislation, said he believed the president's actions would give a boost to the Copenhagen talks and help move the Senate bill. He called the decision to declare an American target a "game changer," domestically and internationally.

But Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the Senate's most outspoken skeptic on climate change, said Obama's public pledge would do little to speed an international agreement and foolishly prejudged the outcome of a Senate debate that had barely started. Inhofe said climate legislation was "dying on the vine" and that the Senate would never ratify a treaty that did not require strong emissions reductions from major developing countries.