 Good afternoon. Hello. Hi and happy new year. My name is Sarah Ladislaw. I'm a senior fellow here at CSI's Energy and National Security Program. And welcome to all of you to our first event of the new year. We are really pleased to have Dr. Jonathan Pershing, the Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. Department of State, here. Actually, for the third year in a row, Jonathan is going to be part of one of our kickoff events for the year. The first time was as a partner to our Energy Security and Climate Change efforts at his old position at the director of the Energy and Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. And then last year we were privileged to have Jonathan here to tell us about what happened at Copenhagen. And now, once again, here to talk about the recent climate change negotiations that took place in Cancun. And so I'm sure there's a lot of differences between what happened in Cancun and Copenhagen that he can talk about. I think maybe the weather was probably one of them. So I suspect you didn't visit very many beaches. And then also not having the pressure of having all of those heads of state arrive at the end of the week, which probably welcomed relief as well. You know, one of the things we really wanted to do this year was to spend some time on what was happening with the climate change negotiations in particular, but also the climate change agenda more generally. And one of the things that we've been hearing around town and the conventional wisdom is that climate change is no longer in vogue when we're talking about U.S. energy policy priorities. And I think what we'll hear a little bit of today in addition to Jonathan's views about what happened in terms of the international climate negotiations, but also how the administration views climate change as a priority going forward is that many of our international counterparts don't view climate change as a done deal or a not in vogue issue and will be something that we're going to deal with for some time to come. So it is with great pleasure. And on behalf of Dr. Hammery, Frank Forester, the head of the program, they welcome Dr. Pershing here to provide his comments and views on what happened in Cancun, what we can expect going forward, and then open it up for discussion with all of you. So thanks very much, Jonathan. Thanks very much, Sarah, and thanks to all of you for coming. It's a pleasure to see you. I know lots of faces in the room probably from last year or the year before, but for those of you who have not yet had a chance to meet, maybe we'll have a chance to have a discussion at some point in the future. But I appreciate you're coming out. In some ways it's nice to start off the year with this kind of presentation, very different in some ways from last year when we began a discussion with what had happened in a process that was perceived by many to have not concluded in a successful manner. I think this one's perceived by many those same observers to have concluded in a remarkably successful manner. And I think part of the question really, as I'd like to address today, is what's the difference? Is there a difference? How substantive is that difference? I actually think we would never have gotten what we got in Cancun if we had not had Copenhagen, that Copenhagen is in a very large sense, not just a ratification of but an elucidation and an elaboration of the specifics in the paradigm shift that I think is marked by the Copenhagen Accords. And I'll try to frame that in somewhat more specifics as I go forward. It's useful as you think about this process not to put Cancun in some abstract isolated context. You've got to put it in the context of the history of the climate change discussions. And it's with that in mind that I put together this little slide. It's really schematic because there's a lot that happens in the intervening years that don't show up here. But you really have to go back to the convention and in some ways previous to the convention just to see what the context is. This has been a 20-year negotiation, not a 12-month negotiation. This has been a process which has unfolded over decades and marks in some sense where the world currently stands in terms of how it thinks about the problem and not an instantaneous shift in worldview but essentially an incremental and steady drumbeat of increased attention, of willingness to act and of collective global engagement. So let's start at the beginning. You go back to the Climate Change Convention and many of you actually follow the convention discussions. It is driven in no small measure by an increasingly coherent science and the science already back in the early 1990s, late 1980s makes clear that there is a legitimate question here. But the science remains fairly conservative and people are cautious and so the statements are somewhat ambivalent and ambiguous and they say we think there's a problem. And reflecting that framing of the scientific community we have the framework convention on climate change and it doesn't say we commit with quantitative numbers it says we have a global goal to try to avoid dangerous impacts. That's a significant statement because it marks the first time the global community gets together in any kind of illegally binding obligation to move and it calls upon countries to inventory their emissions and to report on their actions. But it doesn't set a legally binding obligation to carry things forward. That's where we start. The United States ratifies that agreement. It's kind of a remarkable exercise. The entire ratification procedure lasted only a few months. The last time anyone in this room can probably remember doing something quite so quickly on a major global agreement. Many of you have worked on a variety of other global agreements. The Senate is not predisposed to ratify anything much less climate change agreements these days. So 20 years ago we had a somewhat different context and we were moving forward. At the same time the agreement didn't actually create a legally binding obligation for quantitative reductions. And that was viewed to be at that particular point the mechanism to commit countries to act. And the science became somewhat clearer. If we began with the first assessment report which was somewhat more ambiguous, the second assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was more specific. It began to lay out very quantitatively the kinds of impacts and made causal links between human behavior and the change in the global atmosphere. And those links were then themselves connected to damages that were becoming increasingly evident. They still thought there were some ways off in the future. Back in 1995 when that second report came out the view was we had some time, things were going to be a little while before we really had to worry about it. But it was more definitive. It was clearer and very much led by a view of the European Union which was heavily involved in visions of larger global arrangements very strongly supported in fact by the United States which at that point fully agreed with the notion that you would be best served if you had global treaties. We embarked on the negotiation in relatively short order of the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol was distinct in that what it did was it called for specific quantitative obligations. It set only for a subset of countries, the developed countries at the time, limits on what their emissions should be off of a base year of 1990 over a period between 2008 and 2012. That five year averaging meant to smooth out variations in national circumstances, in weather, in use of energy and give you some kind of a composite number that was achievable and manageable. The United States did not ratify that agreement. But we should be quite clear, the United States is essentially the only country in the world that did not ratify that agreement. So it's not as if we were joined by huge cohorts of folks who felt that was the wrong approach. We were not. We were isolated. Early on, there were some others who took their time getting there. Russia was a notable outlier for quite some period. Ultimately the package that brought Russia into the system was heavily involved, heavily involved WTO agreements with the European Union. We had outstanding other countries that were just not prepared to move forward for a variety of different reasons, but ultimately they're all in. The United States stands alone as the only major country and frankly the only country of any note that's outside of the Kyoto Protocol. And that context matters because it has shaped the debate. It has shaped the global vision of what this process should yield since its adoption and entering into force in 2007. So you've got, in 1997, you've got this long period now of more than a decade where that's the standard, that's the framework. And with the United States being out, there was this incentive to bring the U.S. in and a consistent drumbeat of interest in finding solutions. And early on in the process the vision was well, the U.S. would join a second period. It wouldn't be in the first period, but post-2012 there would be more willingness to act. It would be evident that this was not an implausible scenario, that the costs were not insurmountably high, that the politics could work around the world, and it could be accepted and adopted by the United States. It didn't happen. The Bush administration continued to feel strongly with increasingly strong partisan and bipartisan support from Congress, this was the wrong approach for the United States to take. And so we had this agreement that had world endorsement, but not U.S. engagement. What did the agreement have? Because it's also useful to look at the Kyoto Protocol and think about the elements in that agreement and how again they shape where we have come from. The first thing was it had legally binding commitments. And those commitments varied by country and they were applied exclusively to the developed world. And this was a huge problem. It continues to be a problem for the United States and in some ways marks one of the most fundamental departures from Kyoto, both of the Copenhagen Accord and of Cancun. And that has to do with which countries are in and which countries are out. In 1990, when we developed the list that was used in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, we used the OECD membership as the basis for determining who would take obligations. That membership of course has changed since 1990. But the list of countries with obligations did not change. It was not tied to the OECD. It merely happened to be the snapshot of who was involved in the obligations at that point in time. And there was enormous resistance to seeing it changed. Not just from those members who had joined the OECD, but from others who felt that any shift in the list of countries with obligations would mark a slippery slope and that slope was something they did not want to go down. So who is in the OECD now that's not in the agreement? Korea. Mexico. So countries like Israel. They're in, but they're not in this obligation. And definitely countries like China and countries like India and countries like Brazil with significant shares of the global contribution to greenhouse gas emissions also not in. And significant shares in terms of their competitiveness with United States and Europe and others not in. That framing fundamentally important. A second significant element of the Kyoto Protocol was its emphasis on markets. And the vision was that if you were able to create a legally binding structure, you could establish a regime where you could have a cap on emissions and then you could retain the environmental integrity but allow trading to maximize efficiency and minimize cost. That vision was elaborated in a series of additional decisions taken the year after the Kyoto Protocol in Marrakesh and you had a whole detailed elaboration of project-based offsets and emissions trading regime. That fundamentally continues to be a very strong vision and I would note that it's one that we still think the United States and the administration would be effective. That was something that we proposed and we worked through last year. Didn't get through Congress but continues to be, I think, a vision of one scenario for success. The rest of the world had come to adopt that vision and now there's a very strong coalition in support of the idea of markets. It comes from two sides. It comes from the vested community in the European Union which is working on an emissions trading program and has that interest going forward and it comes from a vested interest in the part of developing countries which are involved in project-based offsets for whom there has been a payment for ecosystem services in particular for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. That's a significant framing and it again colors the negotiations that we've had over the course of the last several years. But on both of those counts we departed in that domain. The third thing and in some ways it's linked to the first one of targets it's not just a question of who's in and who's out and whether it's markets or non-markets, it's a question of who makes the determination about what countries undertake. Who decides what they will do? In Kyoto the process was an international negotiation in which the numbers of the emissions reductions obligations were essentially negotiated among the parties. The determination was made, we'd like to see a reduction where it takes some people one at 10% or 15%, we compromised on 5.5%, 5.4 among the countries but then the allocation was done by the process at the highest level. It was done in a negotiation in a small room in Kyoto among the parties who had obligations and the chair walked around the clipboard and said listen you guys are at 7, there's a lot of push for you to be at 9 but how about if you do 8? And the EU said okay we'll do 8. And the Canadians said well we can't do as much as the US and so we said well the US is doing 7 and the dynamics, the dynamic there of a negotiation among the parties with a top down allocation was a central part of the Kyoto structure and we have again departed from that. So let's fast forward because we now have a whole period of a decade where things in the Kyoto protocol are kind of moving along, ratification is happening, implementation is happening and a continued interest in bringing in those parties that are outside the process. So we come to a change in the US administration and a change which very much is one of an administration which doesn't believe climate change is much of a priority, downplays it in the international context, creates some technology arrangements to try to move some pieces forward but does not operate in the context of having a new international framework. Our administration comes in with a different view. The view is essentially that the problem is hugely important. That there is no plausible scenario in which you can solve the problem with any individual country acting alone. That countries are so tied and their economies intertwined in a way that it's not plausible to imagine some subset doing the entire thing. It won't work. You've got implications for impacts, you've got implications for finance, you've got implications for technology that cross the boundaries of whatever subset you might imagine. If it's the G8, it's too small. If it's the G20, it doesn't speak to the impacts of all of Africa or all of Latin America. It's the context of an agreement that might be everybody, you then have to be back in the UN framework. And the rest of the world has adopted this framework. So it's just been the US as an outlier there and re-engaging becomes part of the process for thinking about how we can move it forward. But it's equally clear that the structures of Kyoto would not work for us. It is clear they would not work politically. We couldn't move forward under that framework. We need a different process. We need a different model. And Copenhagen represents that model. It is a shift in the paradigm of a quite profound nature. Where we'd had a top-down assignation of obligations, we now have a bottom-up structure in which countries make pledges and move themselves forward. Where we had had a pretty much exclusive emphasis on the market as the element, we now have a bottom-up vision in which countries take on actions that appeal to their domestic circumstances. It doesn't mean you can't do a market. It means that the global community is not telling you you have to do a market. It means that you can do things that are quite diverse in terms of the outcomes on efficiency, on renewables, on land use change, on industrial activities, on transportation, and those all work because the community is looking for reductions. It's not dictating how they would be done if the market's still in. It just doesn't focus on the market the way Kyoto had done. And most significantly, it ends up incorporating a much larger group of countries. It is no longer a limited action in which the OECD, by virtue of its membership in 1990, have obligations, and the rest of the world does not. It now, as anybody who wants obligations and is prepared to step forward, can insert those. We assure ourselves that all of the major economies were in. All of the major economies took commitments, and those commitments were inscribed in a public list. But it was a two-page document. The Copenhagen Accord is a very limited, high-level political deal, but quite short. And so in many ways, what we're seeing in Cancun is a reflection of what comes next. So what's in Cancun? Cancun's got a whole series of elements. One of them, shared vision, adaptation, actions on mitigation, how you think about those, the whole issue of transparency, the reporting on your efforts, finance, the questions of reduced emissions from deforestation, and technology. So it was shared vision. The shared vision concept is essentially a framing. How do you package the thing that we're trying to do? How do you characterize it for the world? What are the high-level goals and objectives that you're seeking to do? How do you put it into text? It is explicit that climate is a challenge. Well, we kind of know that, but saying so and putting it down in text is important. The fact of its existence is really unequivocal. And we're making a definitive statement, a political statement, based on the science to that effect. And we also, based on the science, based on the National Academy's reports, based on the IPCC, look at the causes. What you can measure is that the understandings that we have are that the increase in temperature is very likely due to human activity. And we say that. We know that we need deep cuts if we're going to solve the problem. And in particular, there appear to be a number of inflection points in the damage curves. Two degrees seems like a reasonable one that suggests that there are significant damages above. It's not that there are none below, but there are very significant ones above that. And we suggest that two degrees are a goal, a broad goal. It's not legally binding. It's a framing goal. And that we need to have a package to implement it. And essentially, this part of the preambular material reflects all the underlying elements of the text. It talks about mitigation and adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building. Those are going to be part of the solution. It talks about identifying a global goal toward 2050. So it's not enough only to say the next decade matters, but this is a multi-decadal problem. And how you manage that requires a longer term vision. We've talked about setting a goal for 2050. And to look at near-term peaking, which means that global emissions have to peak so that global concentrations can peak so you can avoid the damages. And we talk about the need to have a wider engagement of stakeholders. This is no longer a problem which is neatly confined to an environment ministry within one directorate or one office. It now crosses boundaries of multiple agencies, boundaries across all sectors of society. And you can't solve a problem like this unless you've got larger engagement. Interestingly enough, in this agreement as in Copenhagen, adaptation is the first substantive element that's addressed. And the reason this is interesting is that it's a departure from Kyoto and a departure from the convention, both of which mention adaptation, but at best give them short shrift. A significant change here is, I think, a recognition that we did not have a decade ago that we cannot solve this problem. We will not fix it before damages are real, before damages start to hit people in countries around the world, including United States, but including particularly the least developed countries who are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. So this is right up front. This is an effort to begin to think now about limiting future damage by reducing emissions, but by addressing damages that are currently being assigned and ascribed to climate change. What kind of things do we do? We establish an adaptation framework. A lot of this is about a framing discussion. What kind of process can you have to talk about what comes next? Within that, planning and prioritizing adaptation actions, obligations to prepare vulnerability assessments. The United States CEQ is currently working on such an assessment. The hearings that they've been running over the course of the last couple of years to try to develop an understanding for the United States of our own impacts, this kind of thing is going to be critical as countries seek to integrate their development agendas and climate change. Strengthening institutional capacities. For many countries, they don't have such capacities or if they do, they're remarkably weak or they're not focused on climate change activities in any fashion. And these are things that talk about building resilience as building new capacity. Linking economic systems and ecosystems. Managing the structure across the board. And at the end of the day, it will need new R&D and it'll need the development and the deployment and the dissemination so all the other D's kind of get thrown in because it's not just about the new technologies that you have in the lab, it's about making them real and putting them to work on the ground. We establish a process to enable in particular the least developed countries, the LDCs to do the same kind of work. And at the moment, it's quite clear that if you look at the bottom 30 odd countries in the world, they get enormously and significantly affected by the changes in climate. They don't have much capacity, they don't have much resilience. Any change in an already very fragile system tips them over in dangerous ways to their health, to the health of their communities, to livelihoods and leads to all kinds of ancillary problems that spread out rapidly, not least from the failed states which were already hot beds of insecurity. We established within the system a new committee. The idea is that we need to have a dedicated place to have an adaptation discussion. Historically in the climate change convention context it's been the afterthought and it needed to be elevated and by creating a new committee within the convention we create a forum explicitly for that discussion. And we now need to have a series of additional inputs and you'll see this throughout to provide additional feedback because while we now have a 30 page text, instead of a two page text we need to still elaborate the modalities the operational means for these things moving forward. Mitigation. Second big thing comes up second in the listing of where the pieces go. In this instance the big issue for the states had been parallelism. We were committed to getting an agreement in which the major actors were reflected in a parallel and comparable way which means we were not prepared to have an obligation if China did not. We were not prepared to have an obligation if Japan did not. And this does that. We got informal legal language what we needed to have which reflects parallel commitments on the side of developed and major developing countries. Frankly we're not too worried about what Chad does. We're not really too worried about Burkina Faso. But we're extremely concerned about what happens to the major economies that they cannot do what happened in the last agreement in which there was obligations for the United States which ultimately we couldn't take in no small measure because other countries with whom we compete on the global stage were exempt. This changes that paradigm. Both groups have to communicate their actions or their targets and they have to be recorded and they will be recorded in a public document by the UNFCCC. Both groups and I'll come back to this in more detail in the next slides are subject to reporting to review and to oversight of their actions. And there to be enhanced guidelines developed to make explicit and clear how these processes work. There are quite a number of actions already listed my expectation is that countries will not end up changing these in this year although we expect to see further elaboration and further detail about them. And we can just take a look at what some of these are. These came out in the month following Copenhagen which is why what I really do is put Copenhagen and Cancun together as a package Cancun is not a wholly independent exercise. But there's a range in some of them 36 to 39 percent below BAU is the Brazilian number that's different from the number that China has got which has got three different elements one of which is an intensity number in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP a second of which has to do with renewables and a third of which has to do with land use and forestry. So you get a diversity of actions being listed. Japan 25 percent but contingent on others acting Japan's got a range not yet clear what they're going to do and so we've seen three changes of government since this was originally proposed Japan is clearly moving with different visions but the Khan government seems to be fairly committed to moving forward on climate change we don't know what their number is going to be Mexico looking at something up to 30 percent exactly what that will be remains unclear that it states has not changed but remains committed to the listing that we put in following Copenhagen of 17 percent below 2005 by 2020 in the context of US legislation transparency another huge issue a fundamental question that's been raised to us by members of Congress in hearings that we've been doing by many people that we've spoken to within the United States has been how do you know that other countries will be acting in a manner that's consistent with what they said they would do how can you be sure can you tell us with some confidence that that will go forward the way you anticipate and if it doesn't why should we act because frankly we're not convinced that others will do what they said but we know that the United States will one can take perhaps umbrage at that last assertion but many I think would make it that the United States when it makes a commitment tends to implement and we're not so sure particularly about the world so we needed some transparency we needed a process in which there was going to be a mechanism to review the actions but would call therefore for a level of reporting and for information to be provided by countries with others able to come in and take a look at it and that's what we got and the framework here again is parallel not the same words but comparable between developed and developing with respect to what kind of reporting what kind of actions you have for review what kind of processes there are for oversight the objective is to build confidence the objective is to have confidence that you're acting and that your other competitors are acting which gives you more ability at home to take steps that are necessary for developed developing countries rather we have domestic measurement reporting and verification for unsupported actions what that means is it's going to be a whole number of things that many countries will do that do not rely at all on international support there's no financial aid there's no grant program it's coming out of domestic programs just the way our own budget activities would provide for activity in that element there's a domestic measurement reporting and verification program international consultations and analysis would then be undertaken on these domestic actions which means there's an outside process not just the country itself saying well I looked at it and it's fine but the country you have to have guidelines for your domestic programs and those are to be elaborated but then once you've done the domestic exercise and review you are then subject to this international consultation and analysis which provides an opportunity for other countries to examine what you have done that gives us the ability to look at China to look at India there are going to be limits just like we'll have limits we're not interested in the black helicopters nobody is interested in the quality of what's going forward and that's what we got with the language that's in the agreement there are actions that will be supported not for countries like China which probably won't get very much support but certainly for countries like India which has got remarkable numbers of incredibly poor people countries like Indonesia where the president was recently visiting and it's very clear that moving on the far east side is going to take some support Japan providing support Norway providing support not just the United States those actions not to be examined they should also be examined in the context of the national effort and those are subject to MRV and there are to be rules developed on how those move forward so these are slightly different elements of the review process depending on the financing provided but they have a level of clarity and specificity which satisfied our red lines of what we had to see in this agreement a very similar framework for developed countries and we mostly do a lot of these things already so a great deal of what we see here is an elaboration of the existing guidance and the existing rules strengthening reporting programs we'll provide some additional information on financing and technology a bit more elaboration on that and then we now have these economy wide emissions targets and therefore there needs to be some information provided on those in the existing framework convention there were no such targets and therefore there were no guidelines that you might report on those actions that's now incorporated into this text and there's now a work program to develop this and that's part of what happens in 2011 finance a huge issue in the process the agreement in no small measure in Copenhagen was predicated on the fact that there was going to be action by all the major players and there would be support for those who could not meet the test on their own and who needed assistance both to mitigate and to adapt to the damages of climate change and it was significant we moved forward in the course of the period between 2010 and 2012 with a commitment providing financing approaching 30 billion dollars over the three-year period and by 2020 we committed to mobilizing financing of 100 billion dollars per year now that's not federal financing from all the countries that's a capital mobilization but at the same time it reflects an enormous stepping up of the commitment on the part of the world community to this problem my guess is that's a pretty modest total number I think it's a huge number for us to reach it's going to be a significant commitment and should change the shape of how countries make their investments but if we take a look at the damages from climate change that are projected by most models there's certainly a higher than this so the expectation is that it's going to be the same for the countries this is not a handout this is an effort to facilitate a change in the trends in greenhouse gas emissions and to help to manage for the most vulnerable the consequences of climate change in a way that reduces those damages we reiterate the commitments that we made in Copenhagen they're framed in the exact same language there's nothing new about these and it includes the fast start the fast start money is the 2010-2012 so it's noted people appreciate the fact that there's now some money to kick start the process it includes a statement again about the long term finance it makes explicit that it's not government exclusively it's public and private and that it's a capital mobilization it's not really a loan or grant program and we also established a green fund the idea behind the green fund is that we need some new mechanisms that have the confidence of the global community through which at least a portion of these finances would be moved the world bank is not a popular institution and was an unacceptable body for most countries as the locus for these kinds of financial structures at the same time there are no other institutions that could fill this role and so we found some mechanisms where we can use the bank's expertise but we'll be setting up some somewhat new board structures and some new institutional arrangements that enable us to avoid we hope the kinds of negative baggage that are attached to the bank but take advantage of the significant expertise and capacity that the bank brings to the process so the bank can be the trustee and will help support the process but it's to operate under the guidance of the convention but be an independent exercise there's to be a transitional committee 40 members of that committee developed and developing countries to design this fund the first meeting will likely be held sometime in the next couple of months Mexico and the climate change convention secretariat are going to be the conveners of the first meeting of the transitional committee and we decided we needed to have a somewhat more formal mechanism inside the convention to talk about financing issues and so we set up a new standing committee on finance to be that forum to bring not just Department of State folks like me but the finance community who understand finance and budget and can be much better interlocutors in terms of making sure this system operates efficiently and effectively we took decisions on red on reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation the end of the day this by itself is a sector responsible for about 15 or so little bit more percent of global greenhouse gas emissions the objective is to think about how you can address this problem it's much more than other elements in the energy sector or transport and the idea was to find some scenarios in which this sector which has this different characteristic could be treated explicitly largely again it's a framework it's an area where we can agree on next steps it's a place to frame actions both collectively and individually it includes consideration of the role of conservation it looks specifically at the sustainable management of forest and land and land use the examination of what happens to the forest themselves but the land and the drivers for change in the forests so it's fairly broad it provides some guidance on some quite key issues all of us have seen the consequences the unintended consequences of taking a certain policy action without consideration of other ancillary effects one of the most well known ones maybe real maybe not real has been the question of what happened to corn prices when we began aggressively promoting ethanol at the global level corn prices went up substantially we then had riots about food and corn prices in many developing countries not directly tied because there are a lot of other things that were going on there but these kinds of things matter how do you deal in the forest context with those outcomes how do you deal with social issues how do you deal with the displacement of populations of indigenous communities these are things that are to be incorporated and brought in in the guidance provided in this text the work program that sets out next steps on the deforestation side including issues about how you measure and how you monitor global and national deforestation we have an agreement on technology it's quite clear that there's no scenario in which you can solve this problem unless you both develop new and seek the widespread penetration of existing climate friendly technologies to do this we've got two different new constituent components in the technology mechanism one is a new technology executive committee this is in many ways kind of like the ideas for adaptation and for finance it's a standing committee in the process that can begin to provide guidance to the international community about what might be done next for climate change in the technology arena it'll be smaller though it's not an everyone participating process it'll be a limited committee with different options and solutions one of the things that we have to do next is to identify who from the US might be representative for us on that committee and the second thing is a climate change technology center and network because the idea about technology is that it does not move from the top I can't issue an edict and say from now on technology will be transferred it doesn't work that way it works by companies making investments and training people on the ground individuals and entrepreneurs developing new ideas and profiting from those in an environment that enables that profit to be realized it comes from a mechanism in which you have a much more bottom-up vision of how technology moves and what the international community can do is can establish training programs it can create opportunities where you think about the policy environment and promote that through information and exchange of success stories that's what the network might do there's a small measure on some work that was done in the consultative group for international agricultural research the CGIAR system which some of you may have worked on in which there are distributed networks around the world that work on different food crops so you've got programs that work on rice and wheat and corn and cattle and these are in countries but others can come there and pick up information and ask for guidance and for feedback and begin to develop policy arrangements as well as support research and agriculture this is now going to be designed in a similar fashion building on existing institutions for technologies it will be technologies not just for mitigation but for mitigation and adaptation there are lots of issues still to be addressed one thing I would note we did not do and it was an explicit agreement to not include it there is no language in any fashion speaking to intellectual property there was a strong interest on the part of many to have language that would have eventually said that property should be given away that it states and our allies resisted that there is no text at all in any fashion speaking to intellectual property which is very much what we wanted to see coming out so that's the pieces what happens next year most of what happens next year is that we're going to be in a position to have to figure out all the details you've seen the committees we have to name people to those committees we've got boards, we've got processes we have a whole series of actions we've got guidelines, we have to develop those guidelines this is going to be a busy year for implementation it is not a year in which we anticipate changing the basic pledges or the basic structure we don't think that's necessary we actually now have a new framework and it was a framework that was adopted by the parties in a decision in Cancun and in some ways that may be one of the most significant differences between Copenhagen and Cancun the underlying structure was developed in Copenhagen but it was not agreed there we ended up with an agreement that kind of fell apart that foundered on the back of a number of countries that objected and they objected for a handful of different reasons they objected because they felt the process was closed Mexico in Cancun ran a process that was remarkably open and inclusive that took away a number of objections they objected because they felt that it was new different and it excused countries who should have acted the developed countries and obligated countries who they thought should not have to act developing countries it takes time to work through a new paradigm like that this past year was one of intense diplomacy largely on the part of the United States which was pushing this but also on the part of allies who felt that there was no climate change solution if you only had 25% of greenhouse gas emissions covered under an agreement that reflects a global consensus that yes that's true there is clearly a differentiation retained it is not as if we have lost all difference between you know a China and a Chad or a US and United States of Tanzania we have not they are different they have different capacities and the expectation is that they will act differently but we are no longer in a position where we say this can move forward successfully if only 25% of the emissions are covered the commitments currently listed cover over 80% of greenhouse gas emissions under Kyoto which was the old model emissions between 1990 and 2007 from CO2 climbed on the order of 40% that was the global increase in greenhouse gas emissions in that 17 year period so if you think that that was a successful model I think you should think again it didn't work and it was not that the annex one parties in aggregate failed to meet their commitments the US wasn't a party so it can't be held accountable but the other parties are actually below their obligations in no small measure to the collapse of eastern Europe and Russia which had significant reductions but the net effect was they did meet their commitments and global emissions still went up 17% for 40% in 17 years that's not going to be a workable scenario this may be somewhat better it structures itself differently it frames things differently hopefully it's a program that countries like China and India and we believe the US can not only adopt but work within and implement and if that's the case we'll then start to see that in the near term as the actions that countries take start to show up on the global stage and in national programs and it appears over the course of this year that at least on the part of the major parties that we look at that is in fact that's the case the programs underway in China are significant the size of the incentives being provided are ones that are sufficiently large that we're now worried about WTO actions against China for its support of renewable energy these are not things that you worry about if they're de minimis and at the margins programs in India on land use are substantial programs in Brazil with Dilma Rousseff in her new election her intent is to continue to carry forward by President Lula in the last year these are substantial programs this is a year where we've seen the initiation of those and the initial expectations they will continue I think part of the question now is what does the US do? How do we behave in this framework? The world will certainly be looking at us and so this year as we see what Congress does will matter a lot to the overall effectiveness of this effort to address the climate change problem. Let me stop there and take questions thank you very much thank you so much Jonathan I think that was a really good and comprehensive education both what happened before Cancun and what happened in Cancun while everyone gets your questions ready I just want to remind you of some ground rules we have here please state your name and affiliation and please make your question in the form of a question and wait for the microphone as well. I just wanted to ask a quick question that sort of couches a lot of what you talked about. You started with sort of the 20 year history of the climate negotiations and then you know mentioned the two degree target that's the sort of notional goal. I think a lot of people especially well stepping back a little bit we had the IEA director Tanaka here presenting the world energy outlook with Fatih Barol not too long ago and there's a lot of skepticism about the ability to meet that two degree target even with what is included in the Copenhagen Accord and so you know there's kind of two parts to the question is one you know if the UN process is one that takes 20 years to get to this stage how much longer do we have to see whether or not the commitments are actually coming to fulfillment and does it matter whether or not we're actually on track to meet that target in the context of what you all are doing in those negotiations or have you set up a framework that you think withstands that question either way. Thanks Sarah. I mean my own sense about it is that the two degree goal is a very useful framing construct. What we have in the absence of that is a question of what level of overall effort are we seeking. Two degrees frames that. It doesn't say you have to get there it's not written in a form that says here are the legal compliance or non-compliance consequences or penalties for not meeting that goal but it gives you a level of effort. There are a variety of different numbers that people have cited and used about that goal. It appears that if the US and other countries take their current steps and stop there you would not meet the goal but it appears that there are a number of pathways that if those countries take their current steps and then iterate and elaborate and further reduce emissions subsequent to those first steps you could still get there so that becomes a question. It is equally clear that the idea of setting up a long term goal needs to be disassociated and detached from the framing of a near term goal. You can't in our view set something up in the next 5, 10 years that's impossible to meet. So what you do is you have a vision of where you want to get and then you try to set up a rational and plausible pathway to get to that vision. We think the two degrees is not a bad number we think the current obligations that countries have taken would be a legitimate first step but they have to employ. Okay we'll take some questions from the audience starting over there Oh just wait for the microphone. Vicki Arroy with Georgetown Climate Center. Great to see you Jonathan great job as always. I'm interested in that you didn't mention the Bolivia objections and if you could speak a little bit about your perspective about what that means if anything to the process moving forward and I wish you would have elaborated a little bit on your last point about what we can anticipate in the U.S. I know it's challenging times but would appreciate your views on how we can get to the U.S. target now please. So thanks very much. Good to see you Vicki. Happy New Year. The Bolivia is an interesting example. It's the only country at the end of the day that objected to the agreement. There's an open question about the rules of procedure and the process they've never been adopted. We've never adopted rules of procedure for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. We've been messing around with them for the years since we did the agreement to begin with in 1992 and we've never adopted them. Rules of procedure have to be adopted by consensus and so you can't adopt rules if you have no consensus and we have no consensus about what's known as rule 42 which is the rule about voting. So it's the one rule that might move you forward in these kinds of issues. So at the end of the day historically it's been run in that if there's an overwhelming view that the chair has, that the room is in agreement they'll move something forward. It's not a formal definition of consensus. We don't want to see a formal definition of consensus and we certainly wouldn't want to use this as a precedent to change a formal definition of consensus. What instead we used here was traditional practice. Every single agreement that's been taken by this process has been done through a general examination of the room by the chair and a view that the room is prepared to move even if one or maybe a few countries have objected. That was the case in the convention. That was the case in Kyoto. That was the case with the Bali action plan. It was not the case in Copenhagen. In Copenhagen you had about 30 countries that objected and they were blocks so you ended up with key players who were unprepared to move forward. So Bolivia standing by itself did not reflect the room and in that sense the process reflects the traditional systems that we've used to operate in where it's the room and the large view of the room that moves us forward. The second question with regard to what happens in the US. I have the distinct advantage in answering that question of not having to have the answer to that question. So I work in the State Department and the State Department was trying to get an agreement globally which we got. And one of the things that I am hopeful of is that the form and the structure of that agreement will make a difference here at home. I think it will. We've been told by many members of Congress that they wanted to see certain things as we move forward and we made those elements among our priorities in our negotiations and we got those. We got support for all countries acting and all countries are now doing so including our big worry China and they're acting legitimately and seriously. We got agreement on a transparent process for review. We got agreement on mechanisms to move forward on technology that can support that and that can be advantageous to us as global actors in the technology arena. We got agreement on structures for adaptation that might prioritize the least developed countries whom we as a nation worry about. We got all of those things in a process that no longer modestly things, you know modifies things on the margins but now begins to substantially alter the trends one of the objections to Kyoto was it was going to cost a lot and do virtually nothing. This looks like it would be modest or reasonable costs and do something real. All of those things are part of the program that's what we could bring to the table to help Congress maybe move forward. It's going to be a task. We're going to have to work with members of Congress. One of the things that I actually look forward to doing is to having those discussions. I hope that if people are better informed about the process many have not focused on it. We can be more effective and more successful. The problem is not going to go away. One of the things that I'm struck by is reading the science on a regular basis which I try to do I still subscribe to about a dozen different journals and the science is unequivocal and the articles give you nuance around the margins of how bad will it be not whether it will be bad and I think that a lot of people who think about the problem understand that but a lot of people have not yet had a chance to think about the problem and if we can inform them I think we bring to the table a much more compelling story on the international side to help move that object forward. Hi Jonathan. John Soan with McKenna Long and Aldridge My question is around US-China relationships and if you made a list of sort of the top things people say on the margins of the COP and other climate negotiations that sort of thing one of them would certainly be what we really need is some sort of bilateral deep bilateral agreement between China and the US on climate change to accelerate mitigation and also to break through a lot of the politics here in the United States and I'm wondering coming out of Cancun whether well I guess generally do you think that is a necessary thing and is it a feasible thing to pursue and if so what would the pieces of that look like I think one of the things that strikes me about what happened in Cancun was that it did not happen as a result of a dozen different bilateral agreements although it does turn out that in the last year we have in fact furthered our relationship with other countries through about a dozen different bilateral agreements so they were part and parcel of it but it was by no means those bilateral agreements that gave us this outcome it was a sense in the global community that the outcome was necessary that failure in Cancun that the process of the UN system was much more damaged than people were prepared to allow it to be and therefore agreement was something that was very very deeply of interest to all the parties including in particular to China and to India these are countries that feel that the international system gives them a voice which they don't feel comfortable with in the absence of such a system and that was something that was reflected in the views of many many countries during the negotiation it does not mean that work with China doesn't go forward we're the two world's largest emitters the third largest emitter doesn't catch up for a long long time we have to figure out how we're going to deal with this problem we're more than 50% of the total between the two of us so the idea that we need to have one or the other probably isn't the way I'd look at it we probably need both we need a bilateral program which is strong and which is effective and which manages all of the worries that both of us have about that bilateral program it's not as if we're going to drop the concerns we have about competition with China but we both recognize this is a problem we have to deal with collectively and we can do so effectively if we figure out the right ways to have our relationship move forward my sense is that it's going to continue to be a focus at the highest levels when president Hu comes when president Obama visits when any future president goes on either side that is an ongoing relationship and this is the central issue for us in that relationship and I anticipate it to continue to be exactly of that form it'll be the same with India it'll be frankly the same with the EU it'll be the same with Japan there are going to be about a half a dozen big players who on the mitigation and technology side are going to be central to a long term success thanks Lisa Friedman from Climate Wire thanks for doing this today I have another question on US Congress and that's on financing with long term and short term I mean in the absence of climate legislation how significant is it for the US to come up with a good chunk of money this year for developing countries and to show the international community is there a number that that state department is shooting for short term funding and how far away are we from figuring out with all these studies that have been done what is going to come from for this 100 billion dollars thanks Lisa two things the first one is that the near term financing is not frankly I think it's going to be an open question as to what Congress chooses to do with the continuing resolution and the additional funds but we believe that we are on track for our share of that and it's not like there's a percentage number that we've used we've looked at the contributions that we've made and the requests that we've put to Congress for this year and last year and we've looked at the additional actions that those create for example through OPEC and Exim that fund specific actions related to climate change and it looks like what we will end up with is something appropriate as a share of 30 billion dollars there's a longer term question about how the 100 billion dollars might move and that's what we're going to have to work on what we had done earlier was to look at various kinds of legislative changes but at this point the issue of cap and trade was live and we were looking at that being one of the mechanisms which might generate resources we're going to have to look at other mechanisms because it's clear that at this point that's not where Congress is moving it doesn't mean they won't move there it doesn't mean they won't move there by 2020 and recall the commitment is not for 2010 or 2011 it's by 2020 and we're going to have to look at some of the more complicated questions Hi Jonathan Chris Holly from the Energy Daily I'd like to take another stab Vicki's question as you know with the collapse of the climate legislation EPA remains the main game in town it's regulations and there are almost certainly going to be efforts in Congress to delay if not kill those who suggest that the president might be willing to accept a deal that puts in place a delay if only to mute the criticism of those in Congress and in the nation who are steadfastly opposed to regulation so my question to you is if there were a delay approved by Congress on climate change and the president accepted it would that help your efforts going forward to craft to advance the Cancun agreements? Would it hurt it? How would you deal with that? So it's kind of a hypothetical question which is extremely hard to address let me frame a question or a framework for you and see if I can use that as the response in my mind the United States will very much be a focus of global attention and we are going to undoubtedly continue to be that focus we have been for the past decades countries are concerned about what we do we set trends if we are not acting at home that will be observed and will limit I think the level of willingness on the part of others to also act what that looks like is I'm going to have to work on this year I have not heard from anyone a lack of willingness to engage and my own sense is that certainly it's going to be very aggressively 10 minutes left so I'm going to try and group some questions together if that's alright Su Wei right there and then right here Thank you Jonathan my name is Sun Guotun from the Chinese Embassy in DC thank you very much for your introduction of the Cancun conference as you mentioned and also many others mentioned that the relationship between China and the US you know from the Chinese point of view we are very much like to cooperate with the United States both binaterally and internationally on the issue of climate change you know having said that China and the US are different you know China is a developing country and with its per capita emission is around 5 tons per capita and the US is more than 20 tons per capita so we are quite different and just that gentleman pointed out that the EPA is going to have some regulations and new congress seems inclined to not to appreciate the efforts of the EPA so we hope that the US will take the real need in addressing climate change not just present other countries including China to do that we hope the US will take the need and say that I have a question the question the question is that you know we have achieved some kind of progress and agreement that's good many countries the international community actually expects to achieve some kind of legal agreement in South Africa this year so do you think that it is possible and how to achieve a legal new binding agreement in the ban this year in South Africa thank you we have a great deal of climate expertise in the audience but you got to keep your questions quick so we can get as many in right here thank you our blogger at carboncapitalist.com my question is how does the US plan to support the market based mechanisms namely clean development mechanism and joint implementation post-2012 and specifically in the context if countries don't take on binding agreements for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol Hi Paul General with the nuclear energy institute we have a lot of questions on how do you bring the two tracks together seems like you've made incredible progress on a long-term crop or action track how do you see them coming together thanks very much let me start off with Sung's comment over here there are some very clear and distinct differences between the US and China they will stay for some period of time in fact they will always be unique characteristics that mark the two countries that I think will always stay different I think what's in the context of the UN where nations take on commitments nations have obligations that are a function of their size and a function of their capacity China clearly has indicated its willingness to act and it is acting and it's acting because it has capacity and it makes a difference because it's so big so I think in that sense the US and China have a lot in common we are acting because we have capacity and we are acting hopefully significantly because we're so big in that sense they're commonalities I think we can learn a lot from each other I think that the kinds of cooperative ventures that might be done between our countries could make a very big difference in terms of the overall effectiveness in reductions efforts and those are clearly things we're going to have to prioritize it is evident to me that the next step of this process could go in many many different directions I am struck however by a comment that was made by Jairam Ramesh who is the Minister of Environment for India who was speaking before his parliament in reviewing what had happened in Cancun and one of the things that he said was that it was good that the agreement was not a legally binding obligation because India could not take such an obligation and my own view having heard members of your delegation speak is that China would not take a legally binding obligation either at this stage and nor would Brazil and probably very few if any developing countries would either in that context it is evident to me that the United States would not take a legally binding obligation if these other countries did not so as long as that becomes the basis for movement that it must be the US and not others it must be the US and Europe and Japan but not China and India and Brazil there won't be a legal agreement because that's untenable if the legal agreement has a different character and it works on different pieces either because all major emerging economies are prepared to have legally binding obligations which is possible we could think about that or because the legal nature focused on other elements we could think about that but a structure in which the legal framework looks like Kyoto in which there are legal obligations for the developed countries for the 1990 reflection of whose those countries might be and not for others we wouldn't be part of such an agreement we weren't part of Kyoto and we wouldn't be part of such a future agreement I don't myself anticipate that Durban will yield that kind of a discussion the second question was raised with regard to the dynamics of the missions trading and the offsets I would take note that in some sense the existence of the market has got very very little to do with Kyoto it was established by Kyoto the idea that you could get there was fundamentally a Kyoto concept and in fact if you look at the history the country that was most or the group that was most strongly opposed to the market was Europe which is the group that today has got the most advanced market structure but Europe in developing that structure did not use the Kyoto model in fact the model called for countries to trade with each other and in particular the vision was that countries that had substantial excess capacity would be trading with those that had significant costs which would have implied that Europe would have demand and Russia would have supply but Europe has not chosen to go down that route instead they have devolved their obligations about half of them to the private sector and worked on an emissions trading program within the European Union context and there is every indication that they are continuing with phase 3 and subsequent phase 4 to move forward to implement that provision that continues whether or not Kyoto continues whether or not there is a new legal treaty because that is a function of a domestic commitment and what is interesting to me are the number of developed and developing countries working to develop their own markets so it is no longer a European model exclusively we now have exploration on carbon markets in China we have exploration on carbon markets in Brazil we have Mexico taking this up we have Japan working on a different model we have an offset program that begins to get at policies and not at discrete walled off projects in my mind that is the evolution and the US is very engaged and very interested in those discussions the third question really had to do with the two tracks and I assume you meant the Kyoto track as the secondary one at the moment it is very hard to say one of the major objections that came in Copenhagen was that we were going to have some political agreement in the context of a political exercise for the accord and Kyoto would be disappearing and people were very nervous about that they are still very nervous about that I think there are a couple of reasons that people like Kyoto they like Kyoto one because it is the existing framework and changing from the status quo is hard countries are slow to make any move particularly something that has been around for a decade or more two because it provides a framework for some things they like financial infrastructure which explicitly deals with offset programs that now is distributed to an increasingly large community around the world and the expectation that has a framework for emissions trading which I think is not limiting is certainly a view that many many hold and three and not least there is a great deal of interest in retaining the bright line between developed and developing I think all of those things are going to stand for some time my expectations will continue to debate both of these agreements in Durban and probably following that I don't see near-term convergence at least not this year okay we can take one more question right here thank you I'm Cheryl Hogue with chemical and engineering news I'm wondering Jonathan if you could comment on the role of geo-engineering in future UNFCCC talks thanks very much I think the most significant event that happened in the geo-engineering conversation actually did not happen in Cancun or Copenhagen it happened in Japan and Nagoya in the biodiversity talks and in that particular context the world community then it says is not a party so here's one of the consequences of not being a party to an agreement the world community essentially said that it felt that it was inappropriate currently to work on geo-engineering now it doesn't apply to us and a lot of people interpret it with some latitude in terms of the rigor of the limit my own sense is that's a mistake I think there should be some work being done I don't want to be misquoted here I think there's an enormously difficult debate to be had about the geo-engineering questions it is by no means a panacea it has enormous consequences which we frankly don't know even what they may be across the board it's an experiment that we've never tried and would seriously frankly be I think we should be very very constrained before we seek to apply it but at the end of the day the climate the climate change damages that we foresee are huge the consequences are significant the rate of emissions growth is large there may not be very many choices beyond that and we certainly shouldn't foreclose it although at this particular point in time we definitely should not take it on there are other choices but some of the programs on research that might be looked at are things that could be carried forward it wasn't a big discussion in Cancun thanks all very very much good to see all of you next year, same time, same place, poster I don't even have to pitch it please join me in thanking Jonathan Pritchett