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Clinton: may be able to leave difficult choices on carbon emissions to his political successors. Credit: GREG GIBSON/AP

US President Bill Clinton sought last week to bridge the yawning gap between two audiences for his climate change policy — the international community and the US Senate — by doing what he does best, and offering a vague compromise designed to appease both groups.

On the face of it he failed: Clinton's proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2008-12 managed to attract sharp criticism from senior European officials and prominent senators, as well as the main environmental and industrial groups. But politically he may yet succeed in the classic Clinton manner — by occupying the hallowed middle ground on the issue, and leaving the difficult choices to his successors.

There are two key elements to the sketchy domestic policy proposal delivered by the president on 22 October. One is an early action plan, which includes some incentives to cut greenhouse gases but which largely relies on voluntary actions to cut emissions.

The second is an emissions ‘trading scheme’, ill-defined at this stage but probably international in scope and based on a successful US experiment in trading sulphur dioxide emissions, to take effect in 2008.

The success of the former element will depend on faith in the latter. “It's difficult to see how the early action plan is different from the existing voluntary arrangements,” says one congressional staff member. The difference ought to be that when the trading regime arrives in 2008, polluters will receive credits for cuts they make now. But, as the staff member puts it, “politics being politics, they might choose to do nothing and lobby like hell” against the trading scheme actually being implemented in 2008.

Clinton administration officials seem to concede that tough choices will be left to others. “Each Congress is going to look at what's working and what's not working,” says Gene Sperling, Clinton's chief economic adviser.

The incentives that Clinton will provide for voluntary action will be included in the 1999 budget (for the year beginning 1 October 1998), which he will present in February, Sperling says. The value of tax incentives and research and development spending amounts to $5 billion over five years; a large sum, but not much in its potential impact on America's $5,000 billion-a-year economy.

The research and development package is likely to reflect a recent report from a panel of the President's Council of Advisors in Science and Technology chaired by John Holdren of Harvard University. Holdren called for an extra $1 billion a year for energy research - only enough, he admits, to restore spending to its level of five years ago. Half the money would go to research on energy efficiency and the rest would be split between fusion, fission, coal and renewables. But the Republican-controlled Congress is likely to resist extra spending in these areas.

The other specific domestic action promised by Clinton is the restructuring of the electricity industry to enhance competition and cut carbon dioxide emissions. That, too, may be a tall order in the Congress, where legislation to deregulate the industry is likely to be drafted in a way that protects operators of existing coal-fired power plants.

But the main focus of attention at the conference of the climate convention in Kyoto, Japan, in December will fall on what the United States says it can achieve, rather than what it can actually deliver. In this regard, environmentalists were angry at a last-minute decision by the president to drop a pledge to cut emissions by 5 per cent by 2017. Carl Pope, president of the environmental group the Sierra Club, said he was particularly disappointed by that decision.

This retreat may leave the United States with some room for manoeuvre in the Kyoto negotiations. The United States may concede a little ground to the rest of the world on emission targets, in exchange for something that will satisfy its requirement that, as Clinton put it last week, “key developing nations meaningfully participate in this effort”.

The concessions that the United States seeks include agreement by these countries to participate in “joint implementation”, which would allow rich countries to meet their targets by helping with emissions cuts in poor countries. Of the important players, only Argentina has so far agreed to this. Also anticipated in December is a ‘Kyoto mandate’ attached to the treaty, to bring developing countries into the process.