Analysis: The world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter has an ambitious emissions target that it may no longer meet.
When he came into office, President Joe Biden committed the United States to a target under the Paris Agreement of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The target was hailed as an important step internationally, given global emissions need to roughly halve by the same date to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels.
Now, achieving that pledge is in jeopardy. Biden’s climate agenda has been dealt two serious blows in recent weeks: First an unfavourable ruling on the administration’s ability to reduce emissions through executive action at the start of the month and then the implosion of ambitious climate legislation in the US Senate last week.
In order to meet the 2030 target, pretty much everything had to go right for the United States. Executive action and hundreds of billions of dollars of green stimulus via Congress were expected to bridge the gap between current projections (a 24 to 35 percent reduction) and the 50 percent goal.
Biden still has options left on the executive action front, but they’ve been seriously curtailed. State and local governments and private sector efforts can also reduce emissions. But without the backing of the legislature, analysts say the United States won’t be able to halve its emissions even in the next 13 years, let alone the next eight.
As New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister, James Shaw has regularly attended international climate summits and participated in negotiations on cutting emissions. He says the failure of Biden’s federal climate policy is unsurprising but the target could still be within reach.
When he heard the West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin had withdrawn support for any form of climate legislation week, “I was so completely unsurprised that I had virtually no reaction at all”.
“I think it’s distressing, between the Supreme Court decision and obviously Joe Manchin, who is just a mouthpiece for the coal industry,” he conceded.
“The question that the [Biden] administration will be working their way through is, what can you do with executive orders and other levers that will achieve the same result? What can you do with the states? So I don’t think it’s a lost cause, but it’s an uphill battle for sure.”
This conversation isn’t new for Shaw. His first three years as climate minister coincided with the final three years of the Trump administration, when the US had withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and had little presence on the world stage. While Biden promised to restore the United States to the position of a climate leader, Shaw said he had expressed doubts to the President’s special envoy on climate diplomacy John Kerry and the new American ambassador to New Zealand Tom Udall.
“I have said to both of them, consistently, that we do have concerns that the US political system is getting in the way of their ability to effectively govern on climate change,” he said.
“The first conversation I had with John Kerry, we talked about this. I understand from him that this was the first conversation that he had with a lot of people: ‘Great, welcome back, but US domestic politics is such a basket case, how are you going to be able to actually live up to the promise?’.
“I think his response is credible when you look at history, which is that there are things you can do to accelerate the transition that no amount of backsliding can change the momentum.”
US emissions have been falling since 2005 and are still projected to fall over the coming decades. They might just not fall fast enough to reach the 50 percent target by 2030.
Even if it struggles domestically, Shaw said US engagement on climate is still having an important global effect.
“We’ve always had a pretty realistic view of the US. The global momentum picks up when the Americans are actively pushing and engaged and it drops off when they’re not.”
However, there could be diplomatic ramifications if the US doesn’t hit its Paris target.
“It could be severe because you’ll have the Global South going to one of the world’s top five polluters, ‘Here’s another commitment that you couldn’t live up to, why the hell are we carrying the can for your inactivity?’ And they could make the same charge against New Zealand or Australia or Canada or any of the other OECD countries. But of course the US is significantly more influential than New Zealand.”
The implicit bargain underlying the Paris Agreement was that developed countries bore greater responsibility for the climate crisis and had benefitted from burning fossil fuels to industrialise, so they would face greater expectations to decarbonise and finance the decarbonisation of the developing world.
One element of that bargain has already fallen through – the developed world has failed to mobilise a promised US$100 billion in climate finance by a 2020 deadline. Instead, that target may only be met in 2023.
If the United States, the largest developed emitter and the single greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions over the past 270 years, then goes on to fail in meeting its own emissions targets, the trust in the Paris framework could be fatally eroded.
Shaw said New Zealand does continue to raise concerns about the US’s ability to achieve its targets, but this had limited effect because they were preaching to the choir.
“We’re talking to the Biden administration and they’re on board. The problem is they don’t have Congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court, they don’t have the machinery of government on board. And New Zealand has precisely zero input or influence to that,” he said.
“Like I said, the durability of the US over time was one of the first things that we spoke with John Kerry about when we had out first phone call. It literally was: ‘Hey, that’s fantastic, welcome back. What happens in four years?’”
