German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday that if negotiators meeting in Bali, Indonesia, for U.N. climate talks fail to reach a consensus agreement on proceeding, “it would be meaningless” for U.S. President George W. Bush to hold separate climate talks among the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters. Threatening not to send an EU official to the second meeting of Bush’s parallel talks in January is all the European Union can do at this point to prevent the United States from taking the driver’s seat in international climate negotiations.

International negotiators are concluding talks, set to wrap up Friday, on establishing an international climate regulatory environment that succeeds the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Bali negotiations are only the beginning of what Kyoto backers hope will lead to two years of negotiations on a final 2009 agreement that specifically lays out climate change obligations for every nation come 2012. But the Bali talks are important because they will determine what can and cannot be negotiated in future meetings.

The de facto negotiations are taking place between three major blocs—the European Union, United States and China. The European Union needs a climate agreement, and it hopes to control that agreement by making it an extension of the Kyoto Protocol process. Since the union already has placed carbon restrictions on its economy, effectively decreasing its global economic competitiveness, it has interests in seeing the rest of the world do the same, primarily by getting all major economies to commit to legally binding reductions of their carbon emissions.

Washington likely will pass a climate law soon, but it does not need an international treaty the way Europe does. Unlike the Europen Union, the United States is not facing dwindling energy supplies and energy dependence on a foreign neighbor (Russia). Because it does not necessarily have to come to an agreement, Washington is telling Europe that if Europe wants an agreement that includes the United States, it will be on U.S. terms. China, meanwhile, is trying to obtain as many concessions as the European Union and United States are willing to give in order to bring Beijing to the preferred negotiating table.

In this light, negotiations are not going well in Bali for the Europeans. Thus far the United States has effectively halted progress on negotiating an important goal of many European Kyoto nations—to define a range of nonbinding emission reduction goals and targets that would serve as a guide for future negotiations. The United States, Canada, Japan and Australia are largely opposed to setting the 25 percent to 40 percent reduction target for industrialized nations as terms for negotiation. [...]

Washington appears to hold most of the cards, especially if Congress passes a climate law in 2009 or 2010 that relies on domestic emissions cuts. This law will become the U.S. negotiating position for the international agreement, and no president will sign a treaty that forces the United States to go beyond the U.S. climate law—agreeing on a U.S. climate policy will be too painful for the U.S. Senate to take on twice in three years. With this in mind, the EU threat to boycott the U.S. talks is a meaningless one. Of all the players at the table, only the union needs an agreement. Boycotting the only venue where that realistically could happen makes no sense.
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