Obama pledges greenhouse gas emissions cuts

The Obama administration formally pledged Tuesday that the U.S. will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 percent over the next decade — the opening salvo in an eight-month sprint toward reaching an international climate change deal.

The five-page submission to the United Nations repeats a pledge that President Barack Obama first unveiled four months ago in Beijing and relies on the EPA regulations that have been a centerpiece of his second-term climate agenda. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately warned international negotiators to “proceed with caution” before trusting Obama’s promise — the continuation of the GOP’s attempt to undermine the administration’s climate strategy at every turn.

White House adviser Brian Deese announced the submission in a post on Medium. “The United States’ target is ambitious and achievable, and we have the tools we need to reach it,” he wrote.

The pledge calls for the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Meeting that target would also set the stage for the U.S. to push toward far deeper cuts, the administration said — perhaps exceeding 80 percent by 2050.

Green groups praised the administration’s move. “This important commitment sends a powerful message to the world: Together we can slash dangerous carbon pollution and combat climate change,” Natural Resources Defense Council President Rhea Suh said in a statement.

Tuesday’s submission, known in U.N. jargon as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, fulfills a mandate that countries submit plans detailing their contributions to the global climate effort before a December summit in Paris.

The heart of the U.S. commitment consists of proposed EPA power plant regulations that industry groups and congressional Republicans are already trying to undercut, both by pursuing court challenges and by urging states not to comply. But EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said this week that she’s not worried that the courts will overturn the rules and undermine the president’s pledge.

“We certainly don’t expect that to happen,” McCarthy said during a POLITICO policy forum Monday. “I don’t need a plan B if I’m solid in my plan A.”

Top U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern told reporters Tuesday that no one has any reason to doubt the pledges.

“Undoing the kind of regulation that we’re putting in place is something that’s very tough to do,” he said. He added that “countries ask me about the solidity of what we’re doing all the time, and that’s exactly what I explain.”

In contrast, McConnell alleged in a statement Tuesday that the United States can’t meet Obama’s 2025 emissions target, “even if the job-killing and likely illegal Clean Power Plan were fully implemented.”

“Considering that two-thirds of the U.S. federal government hasn’t even signed off on the Clean Power Plan and 13 states have already pledged to fight it, our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal,” said the Kentucky Republican, who has lambasted Obama’s climate initiative as a “War on Coal.”

The statement was the continuation of McConnell’s “just say no” strategy on the president’s climate strategy. It also echoed Senate Republicans’ attempt earlier this month to undermine nuclear negotiations with Iran by telling leaders in Tehran that Obama can’t make binding commitments without backing from Congress.

The plan the United States submitted Tuesday provides little new detail on Obama’s climate plans, but it nonetheless allows the administration to make the case to other countries that its target is transparent, achievable and ambitious. That could help the U.S. — the world’s No. 2 carbon polluter — shake the years of complaints that it has largely shirked its responsibilities to tackle the climate problem, especially after the George W. Bush administration walked away from the 1997 Kyoto agreement.

Tuesday’s submission touts the actions the administration is already taking to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including the EPA’s power plant regulations as well as vehicle fuel economy rules and energy efficiency standards. In addition, the plan says the U.S. will “make best efforts” to hit the higher end of its target: a 28 percent carbon reduction.

The document says the U.S. is already on a path toward meeting Obama’s earlier target of cutting emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Meeting the 2025 goal will require an additional reduction of of 9 to 11 percent beyond the 2020 target, according to the plan, as well as an “approximate doubling” of the 2005-through-2020 annual pace of emissions reductions.

The plan says the 2025 target also puts the United States on a path toward deeper emissions reductions in the coming decades.

“This target is consistent with a straight line emission reduction pathway from 2020 to deep, economy-wide emission reductions of 80 percent or more by 2050,” the plan says. “The target is part of a longer range, collective effort to transition to a low-carbon global economy as rapidly as possible.”

Jennifer Morgan, the global director of the World Resources Institute’s Climate Change Program, called the U.S. target “serious and achievable.”

“The United States’ proposal shows that it is ready to lead by example on the climate crisis,” she said in a statement. “By enacting these common sense actions, the U.S. can grow its economy and save money through cleaner technologies.”

International climate negotiators have embraced a bottom-up structure that allows individual countries to determine how they will cut emissions, abandoning failed efforts to impose top-down mandates. While that approach makes the talks more likely to succeed, it also means the end result will be less ambitious. Indeed, analysts agree that the final international pact almost certainly won’t do enough on its own to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

The U.N. has strongly encouraged major polluters to submit their domestic plans well in advance of the Paris meeting. At interim climate talks last year in Lima, Peru, negotiators set a goal of countries issuing the plans by the end of March if they can.

But as of Tuesday morning, only the European Union, Switzerland, Norway and Mexico had submitted their plans. Most major polluters are expected to release their plans by June.

Still, the EU and U.S. pledges combined with China’s target of seeing its emissions peak by 2030 mean that the planet’s three largest carbon polluters have committed to taking action on climate change — a feat that once seemed impossible. (China has not yet formally submitted its domestic plan.)

It remains to be seen what other big polluters like India and Russia will do.

Despite some early progress, climate negotiators will have to clear a series of hurdles before they can clinch a deal, which would take effect in 2020. Negotiators must whittle down a 90-page negotiating text that is full of contradictory language being pushed by various countries. And they must strike difficult compromises on the legal framework of the agreement, as well as the degree to which wealthy nations will contribute billions of dollars to help poor countries deal with the effects of a warming planet.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are already fuming because they likely will have little oversight of the climate deal, especially since the Obama administration is expected to ensure that the final agreement will not require approval from the Republican-led Senate. Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) have launched a last-ditch effort to undermine that strategy, offering legislative amendments that would allow the Senate to weigh in on the deal.