What's New

by David Foster, Executive Director, Blue Green Alliance

Copenhagen, COP 15 ¹, was my fourth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference and provided quite a contrast from COP 11 in Montreal in 2005. That year I was the only representative of U.S. labor with an interest in supporting the UN process. By comparison, in 2009, the seven Blue Green Alliance union partners sent 28 representatives, including two national presidents, Terry O'Sullivan from the Laborers' International Union of North America, and Mike Langford of the Utility Workers Union of America. The rest of the delegation included ranking officers and high-level staff of the United Steelworkers, Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers, Communications Workers of America, and Amalgamated Transit Union.

From a lonely voice of one in 2005, U.S. labor is now giving its full-throated support to the importance of an international climate treaty that delivers a new generation of clean energy jobs. At COP 15, Blue Green Alliance played a visible role conducting two side events, one, explaining the necessary elements of effective climate legislation in the U.S. and the second, on building long-term labor-environmental partnerships. We also reached out to the U.S. negotiators and congressional staff meeting frequently to share with them the important interests of working families in the Copenhagen negotiations. We concluded our COP activities by hosting an international labor-environmental reception that brought together hundreds of labor and environmental NGO representatives from around the world. The highlight of the evening was the presence of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. House delegation, and Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

So what were the lessons of COP 15? Many of our European labor colleagues were deeply disappointed by the failure of COP 15 to reach binding emissions targets and an enforceable global treaty. But from the perspective of evaluating the trajectory of the international climate debate, COP 15 represented another step forward in our collective effort to transform our global economy.

The U.S. had been essentially absent from the climate debate since the U.S. Senate voted against Kyoto more than a decade ago. I remember the disengaged negotiators who represented the U.S. at Poznan in 2008. And in the absence of the U.S., expectations on how and when the global economy could be transformed became divorced from the reality of what was politically achievable in the U.S. Congress. In much of the rest of the world, and in Europe in particular, inflated expectations accompanied the election of Barack Obama. Having watched the struggle to pass The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) in the U.S. House, I knew better.

Consequently, I left Copenhagen, sobered by the difficulties that lie in front of us to achieve a global agreement, but distinctly proud that President Obama had played a constructive role by bringing together the voices of Brazil, South Africa, China and India with the U.S. to codify the actual state of climate negotiations. Going into 2010 each country can now focus clearly on its own responsibilities to solve the climate crisis instead of obscuring those responsibilities behind the UN process. The economic transformation to a clean energy economy places difficult choices in front of every government. Yes, Europeans were disappointed, but they were also failing to read the political situation for what it was - a relatively conservative U.S. Senate and several powerful developing world economies which were demanding a different seat at the table.

The important lesson from COP 15 is that every country must now step up to the responsibilities that its own emissions create in a global economy. For those of us from the U.S. it means, first and foremost, passage of comprehensive climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate that commits us to reducing our carbon emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050 regardless of the status of a global treaty.

Some would argue that we can't take such a step and need to wait until we reach global consensus. But waiting in these circumstances condemns us to perpetual inaction. Passage of domestic legislation by the U.S. would break the international logjam.

Others argue that unilateral action would leave U.S. businesses at a competitive disadvantage. But the U.S. House ACES bill provides us with the answer to that argument. Under its provisions, the U.S. would initiate its own cap on carbon emissions and, if other countries refused to take similar actions, would implement a series of border adjustments on the products of energy-intensive industries to prevent carbon leakage - the migration of those industries to countries without similar costs.

COP 15 may have closed the door on one chapter of our pursuit of a clean energy economy, but it also opened the next one and put the responsibility directly on our shoulders. While the threats of climate change are significant to our economy, the opportunities to create a whole new generation of jobs are just as great.

That's why steelworkers look to climate change solutions to put them back to work making steel for wind turbine towers and aluminum cable for new transmission lines.

That's why laborers look forward to working in a new high-wage weatherization industry, employing a million workers, weatherizing every home in America.

That's why transit workers expect to move millions of Americans from home to work and back again on thousands of miles of new light rail systems.

And it's why labor showed up in force at COP 15.

¹COP 15 is the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Statements and opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the author or authors and may or may not be shared by the Surdna Foundation.