The Failures of American and European Climate Policy: International Norms, Domestic Politics, and Unachievable Commitments

CHAPTER FOUR The Domestic Political Salience of International Norms? (Rio to Berlin)

CHAPTER FOUR The Domestic Political Salience of International Norms? (Rio to Berlin) The climate negotiations from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 can be divided into two phases. The period from the signing of the FCCC in Rio through the negotiation of the 1995 Berlin Mandate was characterized by domestic debates over the feasibility of reducing GHG emission, which would determine the nature of the commitments in the Kyoto Protocol. Following an extended period of domestic political debate, the Berlin Conference of the Parties in 1995 established the negotiating mandate for the Kyoto Protocol. The second phase from Berlin to Kyoto shifted the focus from the domestic policy realm to the negotiation of new international commitments built on largely static domestic policy positions. This second phase will be addressed in chapter 5. As of 1992, most industrial countries were unlikely to meet the FCCC’s nonbinding goal of stabilizing GHG emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. The domestic difficulties led most industrial countries to reexamine their domestic and foreign policy positions. Existing FCCC commitments and growing scientific evidence supporting the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere made it difficult to argue that GHG reductions were unnecessary or undesirable. Most governments faced a quandary. They were presented with growing scientific evidence that climate change was occurring and that GHG emission reductions were necessary, but they confronted significant domestic opposition to policies designed to reduce emissions. Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States conducted reviews of their national climate policies between 1992 and 1995. The 1992 presidential election appeared to portend a dramatic shift in American climate policy under the leadership of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. However, the new administration confronted significant obstacles to meeting the 2000 stabilization target and faced even more uncertainty for the period after 93 94 THE FAILURES OF AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN CLIMATE POLICY 2000. Although the United Kingdom and Germany were both well positioned to meet the 2000 target, they too faced uncertainty for the period after 2000. Germany had already achieved the easiest CO2 reductions available in the former East. Emissions in the former West were rising and would likely rise in the East as well unless new policies were enacted. In the United Kingdom, the potential for reducing CO2 emissions through fuel switching was limited, and emissions from the transportation sector were rising rapidly . The British government would likely need to pursue additional domestic measures to significantly reduce emissions beyond 2000. The difficult policy trade-offs provide an opportunity to evaluate the political salience of international climate norms to the domestic policy debates. This chapter is structured slightly differently than the last. During the INC process, international negotiations dominated climate policy with domestic policy playing a constraining role in the international discussions. During the period from Rio to Berlin, domestic politics predominated with international negotiations becoming central only toward the end of the period. This chapter thus deals with the formulation of domestic and foreign policies in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Germany first and then analyzes the interplay of the various actors in the negotiations at the end of the chapter. UNITED STATES American domestic and foreign climate policy underwent intense scrutiny during the 1992 presidential campaign and during the first months of the Clinton presidency. This was a period of significant political debate over the costs and benefits of cutting GHG emissions. The Bush administration continued to argue that short-term domestic policies to address climate change would devastate the American economy. The Bush policy was essentially to reject additional domestic actions and rely on limited GHG emission reductions achieved through existing policies such as the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the National Energy Policy Act, and the EPA’s voluntary initiatives such as the Green Lights program. The Bush administration admitted that the United States was unable to return CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000, but it argued that it had made no binding commitment to achieve this goal. The focus on the United States’ inability to reduce GHG emissions was tied to the Bush campaign strategy. The administration sought to turn some of Senator Gore’s policy positions on climate change against the Clinton/ Gore campaign. In a vice presidential debate, Vice President Quayle attempted to define climate change as a choice between jobs and the environment and suggested that the...