Ambassador
James B. Cunningham

Biography

Speeches

Remarks by
Ambassador James B. Cunningham
Environment 2020 Conference
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tel Aviv, Israel

Ambassador James Cunningham addresses the Environment 2020 conference in Tel Aviv (U.S. Embassy photo by Matty Stern)

AMBASSADOR CUNNINGHAM:  Thank you very much.  I really am quite pleased to be able to join you this morning.  It is an important subject, at an important time.  First, let me say that the United States recognizes its responsibility to play a leading role in the effort to contain global warming.  There is now no shortage of evidence that we are facing a climate crisis, and there is recent scientific reporting that indicates that key climate impacts such as we have seen around us, become apparent more actively, and will be more severe than the inter-governmental panel on climate changes assessments predicted only two years ago.

The United States is committed to reaching a strong post-2012 international climate change agreement at the December meeting in Copenhagen.  We have our first ever Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, who is the principal advisor on international climate policy and strategy.  Stern was named by Secretary Clinton personally as a Special Envoy, and speaks for the United States as a State Department Official.  Special Envoy Stern will participate in all energy-related discussions that may have an impact on carbon emissions, and he is working to forge alliances with other nations already.  We also have a new Deputy Special Envoy, Jonathan Pershing, who will the United States senior climate negotiator and Head of Delegation for UN climate change meetings.

Special Envoy Stern believes that one of the key defects of the Kyoto Protocol is that with only a five-year time horizon, it is disconnected from a broader vision for solving the problem.  A new international agreement should be based on both the ambitious actions that will be embodied in U.S. domestic law, and on the premise that the agreement will reflect the important national actions of all major economies to contain their respective emissions.  This agreement should encourage the most cost-effective reductions – including reductions from better use and management of forests – consistent with the dictates of environmental integrity.  The United States and other developed countries will need to join together to establish mechanisms ensuring a significant flow of funds to developing countries, especially the most vulnerable ones.  Such funds will assist them both with adaptation to the harmful effects of climate change, some of which are already locked into the system, and with mitigation efforts designed to set their economies on a low-carbon course.  Financing and technology will also need to be part of the package for the major emerging economies, with flows linked to real actions that reduce emissions.

Ambassador Cunningham outlines US plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and continue as a leader in the international effort to combat global warming (U.S. Embassy photo by Matty Stern)

We expect the financing will come from a variety of sources, including those generated by carbon markets; private sector funds, perhaps spurred by policy incentives; and official funds.  Officials funds themselves can come in a variety of forms. The Climate Investment Fund at the World Bank, for example, is a way to target a number of funding gaps in advance of a post-2012 agreement.  The administration supports this World Bank funding mechanism , and will propose more funding for it in FY 2010. But Official resources, as we’ve long known, cannot do the job by themselves.

The day is probably near when carbon will need to have a world-wide price, to better reflect global realities.  A world-wide price for carbon would accomplish two things: reverse the incentive to cling to cheaper, high-carbon sources of energy; and create the opportunity for the kind of large financial flows which will be needed.

The United States recognizes that developing countries, including emerging markets like China and India, have legitimate development needs and cannot be asked to forfeit the aspirations of their people to a better life and a higher standard of living.  At the same time though, there is a different path available now.  The industrializing countries need to take that path, for their own good, the good of their children, and the good of the entire global community.  They do not need to follow the fossil fuel path that industrialized countries took, at a time when no one knew anything about global warming.  Now we do know, and now there are alternative forms of energy available and more under development.

To promote agreement under the Framework Convention as well as to make rapid progress on actions to cut emissions, we need to invigorate a small group process in which the leaders of the world’s major economies like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the Group of 8 come together in a dialogue on energy and climate.  That process began in 2007, and it is essential to provide a venue outside the 190-nation Framework Convention Process in which leaders can meet to seek progress.  But now we have to fill that process with content.  This group should be a forum both to facilitate agreement at Copenhagen and to catalyze a wide-range of concrete, cooperative actions, joint ventures, sectoral  agreements and the like, aimed a hastening the transformation to a low-carbon global economy.

And I hope that this session here today is a step forward in the dialogue that helps to strengthen the foundation of an international agreement.

Thank you.

QUESTION ONE

AMBASSADOR CUNNINGHAM:  It is clear that President Obama also looks at this difficult economic time, as a time of opportunity for us to –for Americans and for the International Community as well – to re-visit our approach to the environment and to energies.  I said before, we believe the solution lies in managing a global shift from a high-carbon base to a low carbon-base economy.  We proposed a comprehensive New Energy for America Plan, which will seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela in ten years, and create 5 million jobs as part of the New Green Economy.  We will also increase our fuel economy standards, we are working to modernize the electric grid, we are cleaning up our drinking water, and former industrial sites under this plan, and we will undertake the largest weatherization program in history, by modernizing 75% of federal building space, which is a lot of real estate.  To pay for this, the Congress has recently agreed to invest $80 billion US dollars.  So this is not going to be cheap.  The Administration is also working on legislation to impose a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, oil refineries, and other industrial sites.

This transition around the world will require major upfront investments, and I note for instance China has included at least $50 billion dollars for green development in it own stimulus plans.  We would urge other nations to follow this model.  We believe that this shift could become a key-driver of domestic economic growth in the 21st Century.

The private sector obviously has to play a key role in this.  Private investment and innovation will be key.  Government cannot generate the innovation drive, creativity, that the private sector can, but the private sector also cannot complete the cycle from research and deployment and commercial use without the right kind of government incentives and support.  So, we in the United States intend to have our government in active conversation with the private sector. 

We also believe, as some have suggested that we can’t postpone the low-carbon project until after the economy stabilizes.  Instead, we tend to use in the United States the effort at stabilization itself, to generate new technologies and new innovation and push us towards the right direction.

We want to ensure that the stimulus programs around the world that are designed to pull us out of this recession also push us towards the right kind of environmental future.