After Copenhagen, What Has Changed?
Posted December 21, 2009 at 7:45 am 
Filed in: Unsurprisingly, there is little agreement—even within each political party—as to whether Friday’s last-minute Copenhagen deal represented significant progress or not. For example, according to E&E (subscription required), Senate Energy Committee Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said “Whenever you have developing countries, and certainly China and India stepping forward and indicating that they have a willingness to be a participant, I think that’s a strong indicator that we’ll have opportunities to be working and I think that that is progress.” Senator John McCain (R-AZ), on the other hand, called it “a nothing burger.”
Not unsurprisingly, these mixed feelings translate to mixed predictions about the prospects for climate change legislation here at home. Senator John Kerry, who along with Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), is moving forward with a bipartisan combination climate change and energy security package, seemed to indicate that the agreement would help climate change’s prospects in the Senate, saying “Having China at the table was the most critical thing …. The less developed countries, the truly less developed countries barely emit. And so we have some time to work with them to bring them to the table.” Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), on the other hand, said simply “Look, I don’t succumb to international pressure.”
Perhaps most interesting was the response of Kerry’s partner in energy legislation, Senator Graham (R-SC): “I think it’s a mixed bag with Copenhagen. My approach to this is really not that much Copenhagen dependent. Energy independence, there’s a lot of votes for.” The wide variety of responses alone seem to indicate that Sen. Graham might have the right idea. Whatever its substantive merits or lack thereof, it seems unlikely that Copenhagen is going to change any minds in the Senate with regards to climate change. Those who were for standalone cap and trade legislation will still be for it. Those who were against are unlikely to be swayed by a somewhat vague statement of principles (and, frankly, would have been unlikely to be swayed even if international negotiators had reached a more substantive accord). Cap and trade alone will remain highly controversial.
Ultimately, what might be most interesting about Copenhagen is that, after talking about it for much of the year, it actually changed the domestic climate and energy debate virtually not at all.
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