http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/eu-and-us-drift-apart-on-climate-change/75231.aspx
In 2008, as European Union legislators were setting the rules for the second phase of the EU's cap-and-trade system - the emissions trading scheme (ETS) - there was plenty of traffic between Washington, DC and Brussels, and plenty of understanding between politicians on both sides.
The US Congress was preparing legislation that would create a similar cap-and-trade system in the United States, with endorsement from Democrats and Republicans. The Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, had already tabled Senate legislation to create a US cap-and-trade system in 2003 and 2007. The latter was co-sponsored by then-Senator Barack Obama. Bills were working their way through both houses of the US Congress.
Peter Liese, a centre-right German MEP who was leading the European Parliament's work on the 2008 ETS legislation, recalled at a conference earlier this year the consistent dialogue between the two legislatures about the synergy of the two systems. The systems were even going to be linked in such a way that clean development mechanism (CDM) credits - ways to offset emissions in developing countries - could be traded between them. So EU legislators went ahead, assuming they were taking a path the US was about to follow.
Significantly, both the House of Representatives and Senate versions of the US ETS bills were planning to include aviation in the system. This followed guidance given by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in 2004, when the organisation said it would not develop a global scheme and countries should go ahead and include aviation in national cap-and-trade schemes.
"The [US Congress] bill included aviation," said Liese. "Nobody in the Congress at that time asked China's permission." MEPs and member states, therefore, saw no problem with including aviation in the EU ETS at that time, he said. The only thing that has changed since then is that the House of Representatives switched to Republican control, he said. "Nothing in the international situation has changed."
On the backburner
The Obama administration attempted to steer the US cap-and-trade legislation through Congress, but became distracted by the fierce resistance to healthcare reform proposals.
By the 2010 mid-term elections Republicans were deriding the idea as a "cap-and-tax" system, and when they took over the House, Obama acknowledged that national cap-and-trade was dead.
This leaves only a few regional cap-and-trade schemes in states such as California. but their scope is extremely limited.
The national bills have long since been buried, and Democrats are loathe to even mention the subject. For the EU, this development turned the aviation issue into a time-bomb, as American airlines were to be subject to the ETS from 1 January this year without any equivalent system in the US.
The recently signed agreement to link the EU ETS to Australia's new ETS system may give hope. But other systems, particularly China's pilot scheme, have been slow to get off the ground.
Some analysts fear that the momentum behind cap-and-trade has been lost, leaving the EU on its own with a system that is of limited utility.
The global economic crisis has diverted public and political attention from climate change on both sides of the Atlantic. But in Europe, unlike in the US, the landmark climate and energy package had already passed. During the current US presidential campaign, neither candidate has indicated that they will return to the issue. Republican candidate Mitt Romney has characterised Obama's earlier efforts as a "promise to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet," and Obama has made little attempt to defend the idea.
Whichever candidate wins on 6 November, one thing looks certain: Europe and the US are now widely apart on the issue of emissions reduction. It is a reality that is causing many in EU to question the long-term viability of a Europe-only price on CO2.
