Statements by U.S. Officials
Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policies, Efforts, and Plans on Climate Change
STEAM Carbon Arena, August 13-14, 2009
Istanbul, Turkey
As President Obama has said, climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. The science is conclusive, and we can clearly observe its impacts on our daily life: we see melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, and worsening storm systems. We also see its effects on our food and water sources, our health and our environment. For the first time in human history, science has told us that human activity is dramatically altering the destiny of our planet. Our carbon emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution have caused the climate to change, and science is now projecting how our actions will affect the Earth fifty and a hundred years from now.
Here is the dilemma. How much are we willing to invest, as a world society, to mitigate the consequences of climate change that may not be fully realized in our lifetimes? Deeply rooted in all cultures is the notion of generational responsibility, the idea that the world we leave to our children should be a livable, prosperous place. But dealing with climate change will force us to make difficult changes to our current behavior in order to provide that livable world to our children. Can we, as a world society, meet our responsibility to future generations?
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but we consume more than 20 percent of the world’s energy. We depend on fossil energy to keep our homes warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and lit at night. We use energy to travel across town and across continents. Energy is a fundamental component of the prosperity we enjoy. By contrast, there are 1.6 billion people in the world without regular access to electricity. As the developing world continues to raise its standards of living and these people connect to the grid, increasing strains will be put on our already-limited energy resources. This will increase the temptation to use cheap but dirty resources to meet those demands, a temptation that we must resist. There are those who believe that it is impossible to transition to a sustainable world of nine billion people where the standard of living of all can be substantially elevated, but with new technologies and new sources of energy, we can help to achieve that goal.
Each country has different needs, different priorities, and different levels of development and so our approaches to climate change differ as well. Developing nations have concerns about the sacrifices they will be asked to make in these efforts, as they do not want to give up their targets for development and higher living standards. However, their active participation in the fight against global warming is a prerequisite for a working solution, since developing nations already produce substantial levels of emissions and will continue to do so as they develop. At the same time, the United States believes that developed countries have a historic responsibility to take the lead in this effort, both because we are also major emitters and because we are well-positioned to lead research into newer, cleaner technologies.
We need a second industrial revolution. In this revolution, there will be no single magical discovery to rescue us. We will need a wide assortment of solutions on both the demand and supply sides of energy. There are certain policy tools that we can use to set the stage for this revolution, such as setting a price on carbon emissions, adjusting energy efficiency standards, and targeting research funds to align technology with environmental necessities. However, it is science and innovation that will provide the path forward.
President Obama has clearly stated that the U.S. Government’s policy priority is to drive a clean energy transformation of the economy. For years, the United States has made historic investments in developing clean energy technologies. We know that these wind, solar and bio-fuel projects will create new jobs in our country, proving that there is no need to choose between growth and the environment. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contained $80 billion in funding for clean energy, and we have set aside $12 billion per year for clean energy development, beginning in 2012. These investments show that we view climate change not only as a challenge, but also an opportunity.
The United States recently introduced a national policy to raise our fuel-efficiency standards that will result in a savings of 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold in the next five years alone. The U.S. House of Representatives just passed climate change legislation that will cut carbon pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050. These are very significant steps in the United States. Yet, there is a more to be done, and we all need to perform beyond expectations in order to achieve our goals.
I would like to give you a few examples of some of the items Secretary Chu listed as priorities in the United States’s to-do list in response to climate change:
1) We should be able to construct buildings that will decrease energy use by 80 percent. The lower energy costs would pay back the cost of investment in less than 15 years. Buildings consume 40 percent of the energy in the U.S., so converting to energy-efficient buildings can decrease our carbon emissions by up to one third.
2) We will rejuvenate our nuclear power industry, and seek to develop next generation reactors and proliferation-resistant fuel recycling methods to maximize the value of nuclear fuel and minimize its waste.
3) Our government is collaborating with industry to test existing carbon dioxide capture and sequestration technologies, while we search for innovative methods that can dramatically lower the cost. We will also begin to invest in research that may allow us to capture and sequester carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.
4) We will invest in nanotechnology, and other approaches that will lead to low cost, efficient photovoltaic generation of electricity.
5) In the area of bio-fuels, we support three bio-energy institutes. One of these institutes used synthetic biology methods to reprogram yeast and e-coli to produce gasoline-like and diesel-like fuels.
None of this will be easy, but we are committed to finding reliable sources of energy and innovative ways to reduce the level of our carbon emissions.
Even as I speak, the U.S. is actively engaged in the current round of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Bonn. As you probably also know, President Obama announced the launch of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate on March 28, of this year. The Forum is intended to facilitate a candid dialogue among major developed and developing economies, help generate the political leadership necessary to achieve a successful outcome at the December UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, and advance the exploration of concrete initiatives and joint ventures that increase the supply of clean energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
At the Major Economies Forum in L’Aquila in July, the G8 nations agreed that by 2050, developed nations will reduce their emissions by 80 percent and will work with all nations to cut global emissions in half. This ambitious effort aims to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius, in line with what the mainstream of the scientific community had called for. In this Forum, developed and developing countries made further commitments to take strong and prompt action. Developed nations committed to reducing their emissions in absolute terms. For the first time, developing nations also acknowledged the significance of the two degrees Celsius metric and agreed to take action to lower their emissions meaningfully in the midterm -- over the next decade or so. They also agreed that between now and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December, they will negotiate concrete goals to reduce their emissions by 2050. Forum participants also agreed to establish, at the earliest possible date, a peak year after which overall global emissions will start falling. In addition, the developed countries agreed to provide substantially increased financial resources to help developing countries create low-carbon growth plans and deploy clean energy technologies. Finally, there was agreement to create a new Global Partnership, to drive the development of clean energy technologies around the world. The goal is to double investment in research and development so as to help bring these technologies to the market and achieve our long term energy and emissions targets.
This was a good start, but it will not be easy to achieve these goals. In the coming decades, we will almost certainly face higher oil prices and be in a carbon-constrained economy. Given each country’s different national priorities and the political challenges associated with the radical decisions needed to achieve these goals, we will all need to be prepared to make sacrifices. Given the diversity of interests, trying to get some 190 countries to agree on certain targets will be difficult. It will be even more difficult to balance the need for growth against the need for action against global warming at a time when we are going through a global recession.
The United States believes climate change is a challenge we have to meet together, and we need to begin today. We can either recognize this new reality and seize the opportunity, or stick our heads in the sand and watch our world change irrevocably. All of us bear some responsibility for the problems we face today, as we have all benefited from years of cheap but polluting energy. We also have a responsibility, therefore, to work to remedy the situation and we must devote sufficient resources to find real solutions. This must be our legacy for future generations to come. The United States fully commits to being a strong partner in this effort.