Barack Obama reveals U.S. emission target for Copenhagen

XMAFRUQ6YRM2 President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen on December 9, 2009 to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference. 

Depending on China's mitigation contributions set forth in Copenhagen , President Obama says he is prepared to put on the table a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17% below 2005 levels in 2020 and ultimately in line with final U.S. energy and climate legislation. In light of the President’s goal to reduce emissions 83% by 2050, the expected pathway set forth in this pending legislation would entail a 30% reduction below 2005 levels in 2025 and a 42% reduction below 2005 in 2030. 

Yesterday Barack Obama hosted State Dinner for Prime Minister Singh of India

The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 international treaty which came into force in 2005, which binds most developed nations to a cap-and-trade system for the six major greenhouse gases.(The United States is the only industrialized nation under Annex I which has not ratified and therefore is not bound by it.) 

The 2010 United States federal budget proposes to support clean energy development with a 10-year investment of US $15 billion per year, generated from the sale of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions credits. Under the proposed cap-and-trade program, all GHG emissions credits would be auctioned off, generating an estimated $78.7 billion in additional revenue in FY 2012, steadily increasing to $83 billion by FY 2019.

Since the CRU emails were hacked at the Climate Research Unit in the  University of East Anglia in Europe some countries may be getting cold feet. India and China seem very hesitant to commit to climate change emissions targets because the governing bodies are made up of mostly Europeans Union countries. Which hold most of the technology on climate change data at the IPCC and do not share all of their information with other countries, saying they are not bound by  Freedom of Information Act. 

This boils down to money, the European Union and the United States feel they can come up with the energy efficiency technologies needed to reduce cost or so they want other countries to think that.

Cap and Trade is a quick fix to say the least, all a country has to do is buy more credits to pollute more. It may be the best answer for now because of the global economic crisis but it should not be seen as a final solution.

The United States would be better off holding on to some of  the tax credits and grants they included  in the stimulus package for clean energy R & D. A better solution would be to offer prize incentives to private industry that come up with innovative discoveries that help the green economy. 

The U.S. is investing more than $80 billion in clean energy through its Recovery Act – including the largest-ever investment in renewable energy, which will double our generation of clean renewable energy like wind and solar in three years.

The European Union has sold President Barack Obama on climate change, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are the face of this global initiative, with recent developments in the CRU email-gate Obama may have to back off of fully supporting climate change to save political face as Republicans get set to debate the issue in Congress. 

The clause he put in his emission target statement today, prefacing it with "in the context of an overall deal in Copenhagen that includes robust mitigation contributions from China and the other emerging economies" he may have done just that, and with the US-China clean energy package on Asian tour and the recent U.S.-India Green Partnership he showed he can bring China and India to the bargaining table.

One has to ask the question after the recent developments at CRU, is climate change a big gamble perpetuated by the European Union and International bankers and Barack Obama their unknowing accomplice recruited to sell it to the East or does Obama know exactly where he is at with this?

More importantly, if the climate change bubble being blown up actually works(bubbles have economic benefit if they are sustainable for awhile) do Americans even care?(with unemployment rates at an all time high), that some of the data on climate change may have  been cooked by the Europeans.

Was the international climate change movement pushed along too fast in response to 9/11 and Arab extremist like Bin Laden, as a solution to combat terrorism economically, by cutting off the Arab money supply financed by fossil fuels that the world relies on?

For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the Copenhagen conference. In addition to working with other countries to advance American interests, U.S. delegates will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy. Topics will range from energy efficiency investments and global commitments to renewables policy and clean energy jobs. The following keynote events and speakers are currently scheduled:

· Wednesday, December 9th: Taking Action at Home, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson

· Thursday, December 10th: New Energy Future: the role of public lands in clean energy production and carbon capture, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar

· Friday, December 11th: Clean Energy Jobs in a Global Marketplace, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke

· Monday, December 14th: Leading in Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Secretary Steven Chu

· Tuesday, December 15th: Clean Energy Investments: creating opportunities for rural economies, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack

· Thursday, December 17th: Backing Up International Agreement with Domestic Action, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley and Assistant to the President Carol Browner