Clinton can deliver a tough message to India.
By Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution, he conducted a strategic dialogue with India on behalf of President Clinton from 1998 to 2001.
Published in the Financial Times, July 16 2009.

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When Hillary Clinton arrives in India on Friday, the US secretary of state will no doubt strike the upbeat tone that befits relations between the world’s two largest democracies. But she is expected also to engage her hosts candidly on two issues that have been contentious in the past and may be in future: climate change and nuclear non-proliferation.

In both areas, President Barack Obama’s positions are radically different from his predecessor’s. Unlike George W. Bush, Mr Obama understands the need for a rules-based international system that will regulate and reduce levels of greenhouse gas emissions and nuclear weaponry.

In particular, Mr Bush, like the Republican-controlled US Senate of the late 1990s, opposed the Kyoto protocol on climate change and the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). He also had little use for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), even though it was largely an American initiative going back to the dawn of the cold war.

Those Bush policies suited many Indians. In their view, a global regime to restrict carbon emissions could hinder India’s growth, while the CTBT and the NPT blocked their right to develop the nuclear-weapons capability their government demonstrated when it conducted a series of tests in 1998. Under Mr Bush, the US and India negotiated a pact on co-operation in civil nuclear power that will, when the details of its implementation are worked out, grant India an exemption from the terms of the NPT.

Mr Obama, however, is committed to ratifying the CTBT, strengthening the NPT, and pursuing other treaties to prevent the spread of dangerous material and technology. He also intends for the US to be part of the international effort to replace the Kyoto protocol with a treaty-based climate-control regime including India, China and other emerging powers.

As a result, on both proliferation and climate change, many Indians regard Mr Bush with nostalgia and Mr Obama with muted apprehension. Mrs Clinton, however, is seen as a staunch friend of India. Her trip there as first lady in 1995 helped break the ice in US-Indian relations after 50 years of estrangement, paving the way for President Bill Clinton’s visit in 2000. She is therefore in an ideal position to deliver a message in New Delhi that is both reassuring and cautionary.

The US administration knows it cannot coax or bully India into formally joining the NPT, nor will it renege on the civil nuclear deal it inherited from Mr Bush. At the same time, Washington policymakers hope that India’s Congress party-led government, now that it has been returned to power with an increased mandate, will join the US in tightening the verification authorities of the International Atomic Energy Agency, accelerating negotiations to stop the production of fissile material (the stuff at the core of nuclear warheads) and bringing the CTBT into force.

These steps would make India’s region safer, since Pakistan might follow suit in a positive direction, just as it did in a negative one when it conducted a nuclear test shortly after India’s in 1998. A similar appeal to self-interest might prevail with respect to climate change. Since much of India’s population lives in rural and coastal areas, it is acutely vulnerable to the devastation of agricultural lands and rising sea levels that come with global warming.

Key figures in India are beginning to accept the idea of a global compact on climate change. However, they are focused on the 12-to-1 disparity between the average American’s carbon footprint and the average Indian’s. Therefore they want progress towards parity in the final agreement. If the US achieves the 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050 that Mr Obama supports, the gap between the US and Indian footprints per capita would shrink dramatically.

Indians (like many Americans) need to be persuaded to see the urgency of prompt action. There are few voices more persuasive than that of the Indian scientist R. K. Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. He believes that the world has about six years to impose drastic and effective reductions on greenhouse gases. That will only happen if Mr Pachauri’s and Mrs Clinton’s governments can make common cause.

The writer, president of the Brookings Institution, conducted a strategic dialogue with India on behalf of President Clinton from 1998 to 2001.

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Sec. Clinton visits India, urges help vs. terror.

By ROBERT BURNS, AP National Security Writer – Sat Jul 18, 2009.
MUMBAI, India – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton opened a three-day visit to India on Saturday by urging India not to repeat American mistakes in contributing to global pollution, and she passionately defended U.S. demands for help in fighting terrorism.
“We acknowledge now with President Obama that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem that we face with climate change,” she said. “We are hoping a great country like India will not make the same mistakes.”
She was referring to Obama’s statement in Italy earlier this month that the U.S. had “sometimes fallen short” of its responsibilities in controlling its carbon emissions.
Speaking at a news conference on the pool side patio of the Taj Mahal Palace & Hotel, which was strewn with bodies after terrorists attacked this coastal city last November, she cast India and the United States as allies in the fight against terrorism.
“Yesterday’s bombings in Jakarta, Indonesia, provide a painful reminder that the threat of such violent extremism is still very real. It is global. It is ruthless. It is nihilistic and it must be stopped,” she said.
“We have a great sense of solidarity and sympathy, having gone through what we did on 9/11,” she added.
Her voice rising, Clinton insisted that the U.S. demand for international action against terrorist should not be taken lightly. “We know how important (it is). We are fighting wars to end the threat of terrorism against us, our friends and allies around the world.” She said India can choose its own way of contributing but must be part of a broader effort to defeat the threat.
“We expect everyone” who shares the U.S. goal of a more stable world “to take strong action to prevent terrorism from taking root on their soil and making sure that terrorists are not trained and deployed” from their territory to carry out attacks elsewhere, she added.

Earlier, Clinton attended a ceremony commemorating the Mumbai attack, which killed 166 and raised tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan. At the event were five staffers from the Oberoi Hotel and 10 from the Taj, including general manager Karambir Kang, who lost his wife and two children during the three-day siege.
The event was closed to reporters.

In a memorial book she wrote: “Americans share a solidarity with this city and nation. Both our people have experienced the senseless and searing effects of violent extremism. And both can be grateful and proud of the heroism of brave men and women whose courage saved lives and prevented greater harm on 26/11 and 9/11. Now it is up to all nations and people who seek peace and progress to work together. Let us rid the world of hatred and extremism that produces such nihilistic violence.”

She also met with 11 Indian business leaders, including Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, the largest privately held company in India. Echoing remarks made by Ambani at the meeting, Clinton said that India should leapfrog the developed world to come up with its own innovative way to encourage environmentally friendly growth.
“Just as India went from a few years ago having very few mobile phones to now having more than 500 million mostly cell phones by leapfrogging over the infrastructure we built for telephone service, we believe India is innovative and entrepreneurial enough to figure out how to deal with climate change while continuing to lift people out of poverty and develop at a rapid rate,” she said.
Seeking to assuage Indian concerns that the U.S. pressured India into making concessions to Pakistan despite that nation’s failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack, Clinton emphasized that the U.S. respects India’s sovereign right to make its own decisions.

“Discussion between India and Pakistan is between India and Pakistan,” she said.
The visit marked a return to the world stage for Clinton, who has been slowed since mid-June by an arm injury that forced her to cancel plans to attend international meetings in Italy and Greece last month and to accompany President Barack Obama on his visit to Russia earlier this month.
Clinton is scheduled to hold talks Sunday and Monday in New Delhi with Indian government officials on a wide range of issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, strengthening trade ties and combatting climate change. She is to attend talks in Thailand later in the week with representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

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India and Climate Change -
Yes, the U.S. emits more per capita. But it’s also been more responsible about population growth.

By WILLIAM ANTHOLIS, The Wall Street Journal, July 18-19, 2009.

{He served on the National Security Council during the Kyoto negotiations at the time of the Bill Clinton Presidency, and is now  managing director of the Brookings Institution.}

As the world community gears up for another round of climate-change talks — and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Delhi on Sunday for meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — a central issue will be how to bring developing countries into a climate-change pact.

Developing countries such as India do not want to pledge to reduce their emissions until industrial countries have first demonstrated not just pledges but actual emissions cuts. Industrial countries, for their part, generally recognize that they should act first. But they want some assurance that their reductions won’t be meaningless in the face of rapidly rising emissions in China and India.

India’s Mr. Singh has become the spokesperson for “equity” in emissions reductions. Mr. Singh has acknowledged that climate change is a problem and has said that India will do its part. Like all developing country leaders, however, he points to the fact that industrial countries have contributed a century’s worth of emissions to the global atmosphere while developing countries have only started to use, in his phrase, their “share of the global atmosphere.” He has pledged that India will never exceed the per capita emissions of industrialized nations. He also said that India will only consider signing on to a climate pact when a common global per capita emissions target has been established.

When it comes to saving the planet, there are strong reasons to consider per capita emissions as part of a burden sharing formula. However, we should be cautious about making this the magic bullet that resolves the dispute between industrial and developing countries. Indeed, the Indians themselves should be cautious. It undermines a core part of their argument.

At some level, Mr. Singh is right. India has not contributed historically to the problem. U.S. per capita emissions are probably 12 times those of India’s. If the U.S. meets the ambitious goal of cutting emissions 83% by 2050 — as stipulated in the recent energy bill passed by the House of Representatives — U.S per capita emissions would drop from 20 tons to three or four tons per person annually.

That per capita standard would still be double India’s current level of two tons per person. Because emissions linger in the atmosphere for 50 years, scientists tell us that all countries must cut their emissions over the next four decades to protect the planet. So if the U.S., the EU, and Japan slash emissions, but China, India and other developing countries continue to emit greenhouse gases unabated, by 2050 the overall global emissions might decrease, but not by enough.

But that’s not the only reason to be concerned about the per capita standard.

First, a per capita emissions standard does not consider population growth. It only looks at the quantity of greenhouse gases each person emits. That standard accepts, in essence, that unmitigated population growth is fine. This undermines a careful consensus developed over a decade ago, with India’s support, at the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development. After a century of inaction, the world community agreed that population growth needed to be managed. Even under that mandate, China and India together may add almost a billion more people to the world’s population by 2050.

Second, countries like India are using a double standard when they talk about history. In essence, developing nations are arguing that the U.S., the EU and Japan need to act first on climate change. They need to make up for their history of using fossil fuels, even though these nations did not know at the time that they were threatening the climate.

Yet there is also a population-growth history that can’t be ignored. During at least the last half of the 20th century, population growth exploded in developing nations. From 1950 to 2000, world population grew 2.5 billion to six billion — an increase of about 140%. Over that period, India went from 350 million people to over a billion — up 182%, outpacing even China’s increase. By comparison, the U.S. grew from 157 million to 287 million — a rate of increase that is well below the world average.

If developed nations are held responsible for emissions that they historically contributed, oblivious to their impact on climate change, why shouldn’t developing nations take responsibility for producing generations of people who will generate emissions into the future? Put another way, it is unclear whether we should use the population figures of 1950, 2000 or 2050 in judging per capita contributions to climate change.

Fighting climate change is a complex and dynamic undertaking. As with most metrics, the per capita standard is too simple. It doesn’t fully acknowledge the emissions of previous and future generations. When Mrs. Clinton meets with Mr. Singh, she should make it clear that a static per capita metric alone cannot solve the problem of climate change.

Mr. Antholis, who served on the National Security Council during the Kyoto negotiations, is now managing director of the Brookings Institution. He is also responsible for next article that was published right after the Obama inaugural.

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www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17985_Page2.html
Case for climate protection authority

By NIGEL PURVIS & WILLIAM ANTHOLIS | 1/27/09

In an Ideas piece, authors argue that postponing major action on climate change would be a mistake.

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama warned that “there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans.” As the economic crisis deepens, pressures grow on Obama to defer campaign pledges and lighten his agenda with Congress. That is clearly the case when it comes to addressing energy security and climate change. Yet the president’s instincts are right: Postponing major action — however painfully complicated this set of domestic and international negotiations may appear — would be a major mistake.

Obama can move forward now by working with Congress to create a new Climate Protection Authority — a constitutionally sound way of having the president and Congress work together on complex international undertakings.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt — a man who knows Congress and who favors immediate action on these issues — recently described the task of transforming domestic and international energy policy as “the single most difficult political transaction in the history of mankind.” We must fundamentally reshape how we light and heat our homes, offices and factories and how we power our planes, trains and automobiles. We also must try to simultaneously lower our dependence on oil from Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia; reduce the amount of coal burned in China and India; and increase the amount of rain forest saved in Brazil and Indonesia.

From a policy standpoint, we must do all this quickly. The longer we wait to reduce our energy dependence and stabilize the Earth’s climate, the more we put our economy, security and environment at risk.

From a political standpoint, acting quickly is also essential. Domestically, the president’s public approval and congressional majorities may never be as high. And the fragile consensus that has emerged among environmentalists and many businesses for regulating greenhouse gases could fade if the economy continues to worsen. Internationally, Obama must quickly solidify the global goodwill that greeted the November election. His mettle will be tested in December, when the international community is scheduled to gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. To reclaim global leadership, the United States must show the world proof that it has the political will to curb greenhouse gases.

A Climate Protection Authority would make these tall tasks easier. Here is how it would work.

First, in consultation with Congress, the president would decide that future climate and energy agreements are to be approved by the United States by statute rather than as treaties. Statutes require a majority in both houses of Congress, whereas treaties require two-thirds of only the Senate. Federal courts have repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of bicameral statutory approval of international pacts. In fact, the United States enters into more international agreements this way than by treaty, including some arms control agreements and environmental pacts and almost all trade deals.

Second, Congress should spell out in cap-and-trade legislation the conditions necessary for U.S. participation in new climate and energy agreements. For example, it should describe the role we envision for China, India and other major developing countries.

Third, cap-and-trade legislation should preapprove new climate and energy agreements that meet these congressional preconditions. Agreements that do should come into effect for the United States either without further congressional review or pursuant to the streamlined approval process Congress has used for most trade agreements.

The arguments for a Climate Protection Authority are strong.

Like trade and arms control agreements, energy and climate pacts are lengthy to negotiate, hard to undo and negotiated in successive “rounds.” And like trade talks, climate negotiations resemble the constant tinkering of domestic legislation far more than the long-lived treaties that the founders envisioned.

The Constitution gives a special role to the House on economic issues. Major energy legislation and negotiation will affect every sector of the economy and should come before the full Congress, not just the Senate.

Other nations would be more likely to meet our terms, for they have come to distrust our treaty-making process. These countries are reluctant to make politically difficult concessions only to see the United States stay out of the agreement in the end. By preapproving agreements that meet enumerated statutory conditions, the path to U.S. participation would become clear and U.S. negotiators would be able to extract needed concessions.

It’s unrealistic to think Congress has the time and attention to take up domestic legislation and an international agreement separately (in whatever order). The right approach is to link them now.

Obama and Congress together have an opportunity to overhaul U.S. energy policy and build a durable global framework for protecting the climate. Given the challenges involved, they would be wise to create a Climate Protection Authority that moves the domestic and international transactions in tandem now.

Nigel Purvis is the president of Climate Advisers and a visiting scholar at Resources for the Future. William Antholis is managing director of the Brookings Institution.