U.S. and China Make Nice With the World On Climate Accord

Poor Obama. He can't seem to catch a break.

Opponents on both sides of the climate debate are howling their disapproval of the historic accord he quietly arranged with China.

When others were not paying attention the President did what leaders ought to do—engage the other side at the bargaining table and propose solutions that each can live with.

The world's two epic polluters quietly came up with significant but non-binding goals for achieving measurable improvements in sustainability, compared with their sorry records of mitigating ominous threats to climate.

The agreement says the U.S. "intends to achieve an economy-wide" reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 26-28% below 2005 levels by the year 2025. China "intends to achieve the peaking" of GHG emissions "by around 2030… and to increase their share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030."

There is plenty for both sides to attack.

The assurances seem squishy to those of us who want higher, tougher goals; and unbalanced to those who want to use China's more modest aspirations as a cudgel to bash the President for kowtowing to the Commies.

Its greatest value is that the world's most egregious polluters voluntarily sat across the table from each other. They talked. They haggled. They probably whispered about the gravest dangers of climate.

Ultimately they agreed their national energy policies are contrary to their own self-interest. Their collective policies are contributing to geopolitical instability, crushing poverty, threats to species, discrimination against the powerless and untold human suffering.

The first major global convention on environmental threats was the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The focus then was about the ozone depletion caused primarily by chlorofluorocarbons, (CFC's) .

The Right denied the shredding of the ozone layer then, just as they deny Climate Change today. Industry claimed banning the chemicals would destroy jobs and industries. But laws were changed, substitutes for the banned propellants and coolants were found and 27 years later the holes in the ozone layer have healed.

History's most obstinate crises have birthed resolution at the bargaining table. There are well over 1,000 International Treaties and Agreements addressing the most fearsome issues of our time. From fragmentary bombs to nuclear testing to marine-life protections in international waters--all began with adversaries sitting face-to-face and bargaining.

Chinese (and East Indian) economic growth has fed an insatiable appetite for energy, most of it coming from coal-fired power plants. Despite this agreement China isn't going to suspend construction of the 50 huge-scale coal-fed electric power plants to be built each year for the next 20 years. The Agreement wasn't a Treaty and it isn't truly enforceable.

But before this accord, China's and America's only common ground was mutual global arrogance. Now that ground has shifted to protect not just their own people, but the rest of us as well.

The worst that can be said of Obama's brokering of this agreement is that it is a start.

But in a year or two we might be able to say that the accord is much more. We might be able to say it represents a turning point in global activism to combat climate change. And that the two powers finally began to make decisions on their own self interest.