Such an outcome would disappoint many, including the European Union’s negotiating team, which says it will be pushing for binding commitments during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Lima this week and next. America’s negotiators are pushing for voluntary commitments.
The success of the next climate agreement, which is due to be finalized during talks in Paris one year from now, may hinge on American negotiators winning in this latest spat in a long-simmering quarrel with their European counterparts.
That’s because of the supersized role that the U.S. would need to play in solving the climate change problem, and because of the global knock-on effects of political gridlock in Washington, D.C., combined with the widespread resistance from Republican lawmakers to address the role of fossil fuel burning in warming the world.
If climate-salving measures agreed to by nations during the next year of negotiations are to be legally binding under international law, the agreement reached in Paris would need to be formalized as a treaty. And signing the U.S. onto such a treaty is regarded as impossible.
“If countries make legally binding commitments to reduce emissions, then there would be a very good argument that it should go to the Senate before the U.S. joins,” Daniel Bodansky, a senior sustainability scholar at Arizona State University, and a leader of its Center for Law and Global Affairs, said. “If it doesn’t have legally binding commitments then it’s more unclear. Arguably, it doesn’t have to go to the Senate.”
“There is no chance, there is zero possibility that the U.S. congress will ratify a binding commitment,” Yale University professor Daniel Esty, who has appointments in the university’s environment and law schools, said.
Read more at Giving Climate Pact Legal Teeth Could Make It Toothless
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