Economy may force Obama to cut back on green pledge

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 27 2008 00.01 GMT

Barack Obama, who promised last week to write a "new chapter in America's leadership" on the environment, could find his hands tied by the economic crisis, a leading figure in global climate change negotiations said yesterday.
John Kerry, who will lead the US Senate's delegation to the UN's climate meeting in Poznan, Poland, next month, said his country was now in a position to play a leading role on global climate change negotiations. But he also said Obama's administration would be constrained by the economic crisis in offering incentives to countries such as India and China to commit themselves to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
"We have to figure out what is achievable ... within one year, given our economic realities," Kerry said. "The bottom line is we are not going to be in the position we were two years ago in the short term to do as much technology transfer or economic assistance in terms of transitional issues that might have led other countries to participate."
The caution came amid rising expectations on the eve of the two-week UN meeting, which begins on Monday, about the prospects of negotiating a successor to the Kyoto protocol late next year. Kerry said there would be little negotiation on a treaty at the meeting but it would focus on setting out a timetable leading up to next year's international climate change summit at the Copenhagen meeting. "This is not a negotiation session," he said. "This is a negotiation to set up a glide path going into Copenhagen."
In a video appearance last week before a climate change conference hosted by California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Obama promised the US would lead the way on the environment.
Kerry reaffirmed that pledge, even with the caveats. "It's a moment we've been waiting for, many of us, for some period of time - for eight years, to be blunt," he said. "And we intend to pick up the baton and really run with it here."
Kerry said Obama had asked him to report back on the meeting in Poland.
The Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, Kerry is scheduled to take over as the chairman of the Senate's foreign relations committee in January. That puts him in pole position for lining up support in Congress behind a successor to Kyoto. "It's going to be one of the top priorities of the committee," Kerry said. "I know this playing field and I know this issue."
Kerry said Obama was making progress in filling the environmental portfolios in his administration, and in coordinating with working committees in Congress. Obama will not be in Poznan. His position since the election has been that America has only one sitting president at a time. But the focus has already shifted towards the potential actors in the next administration.
On the American side, Kerry is to be joined at Poznan by the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, an early supporter of Obama, who has been active on the environment. George Bush will be sending his regular negotiators to Poland for the final climate change conference of his administration. The US delegation will be led by the undersecretary of state, Paula Dobriansky. Jim Connaughton, the White House adviser on the environment, will also attend. The US delegation was heckled at last December's climate conference in Bali.