Photo: The White House

Obama has a golden opportunity to show the growing ranks of disappointed progressives and moderates that his administration is about changing politics as usual — if he and his advisors have the political courage to seize the moment. Obama must harness the public outrage at BP and momentum toward economic revitalization to make concrete steps toward U.S. leadership in the global transition away from dirty fuel to clean, renewable energy.

In less than two weeks, leaders from the 20 wealthiest countries (the G20) will meet in Toronto to discuss global economic recovery and closely related matters such as climate change. Outstanding on their agenda — as proposed by Obama last September — is the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies.

Worldwide, developed countries spend up to $100 billion a year making oil, coal, and gas cheaper for energy companies through tax breaks, subsidized loans, price controls, and other giveaways. Estimates of federal handouts to the U.S. oil industry range as high as $39 billion a year.  

The idea behind fossil fuel subsidies is to keep the cost of producing energy low so that company profits are high enough to incentivize continued production. That might have made sense when oil, coal, and gas were the only feasible sources of power to run the American economy. You could have even argued for oil company handouts or when the price of a barrel of oil was only $18 — as it was in 1995 when Congress established a royalty waiver program for deepwater drilling. But today the price of oil is more than $70 a barrel. BP just posted a $6.1 billion profit in the first quarter. And scientists, governments, and schoolchildren around the world understand that burning fossil fuels is putting the future at risk from climate change. Enough is enough.

Obama should return to his commitment tonight, outlining not only how to regulate the out of control oil industry, but how to shift the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars going to dirty energy each year into safer, cleaner, and more secure energy sources in the U.S. and abroad.

But he’s got to get the cuts right. The OECD — a group of 31 industrialized countries — has its eye on consumer subsidies in the developing world. Eliminating tax exemptions that make energy accessible in impoverished countries and communities should be off the table until government handouts to oil, coal, and gas companies raking in billions have ended.

And we should make sure that these incentives go to the right place — to deployment of proven technologies like wind and solar, research and development of innovative ideas, and to small and medium sized energy companies that can help decentralize and localize the energy sector, making energy companies accountable to the communities in which they operate.

In his speech to an anxious country, Obama should lay out how federal support for a vibrant clean energy economy will usher in a new era of environmental and economic security.

Getting the right laws on the books, and then enforcing them, is clearly critical to avoiding another environmental and economic disaster like BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion. No question. But until we collectively kick our oil addiction — and dependence on other dirty energy like coal, gas, and nuclear power — we can expect to continue reading headlines like “Deadly Coal Mining Disaster in West Virginia,” “Radioactive Waste from Nation’s Oldest Nuclear Power Plant Reaches Aquifer in New Jersey,” and “Massive Oil Slick Hits Battered Gulf Coast.” Obama can help us start tonight.

The second round of this year’s climate negotiations have wrapped up in Bonn, Germany, and government negotiators are digging in to their positions, making the chances of signing any global climate deal in Copenhagen this December – let alone a fair deal – increasingly slim.

A snapshot at the midpoint on the road to Copenhagen reveals that much has stayed the same since last time parties were assembled here in March. Two major hurdles block forward movement in reaching an agreement: the lack of political will by industrialized countries to commit to deep cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions, and resistance on their part to deliver comprehensive financing to help poorer countries deal with locked-in climate change and a shift to ecologically sustainable development.

What’s beginning to change with this round of talks is how developing countries and climate justice movements frame both of these issues.

The Climate Debt Must be Repaid

According to a growing number of governments and civil society organizations the developed world owes the developing world a twofold climate debt. The greenhouse gases that rich countries have released to date directly translate into physical impacts and financial losses in poorer countries. At a technical briefing arranged by UN officials on historical responsibility for climate change, Bolivian ambassador Angelica Navarro noted a loss of 4 to 17% of GDP each year in her country as a result of changing weather patterns. These impacts constitute an “adaptation debt.” And to pay it off, those who caused the problem must fully compensate developing countries for the effects of their emissions.

A second debt – an “emissions debt” – is a bit more complicated, but no less real. It’s based on the scientific fact that the atmosphere has a limited capacity to absorb greenhouse gases before reaching the tipping point of irreversible climate chaos – and on the principle that every person, no matter where he or she lives, has an equal right to the remaining atmospheric space.

The South Centre, a Geneva-based intergovernmental organization, estimates that the space left can hold up to 600 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions – and the people in industrialized countries have already used more than their fair share. With less than 20% of the world’s population, they have emitted almost three quarters of all climate change gases. According to Martin Khor, director of the South Centre, if rich countries don’t radically change course they will have used up 240 gigatons of the atmospheric space by 2050, although based on population their allocation should only be 125 gigatons.

In other words, developed countries have taken out a loan of 115 gigatons of carbon dioxide, and developing countries are asking for it back. As people in poorer nations continue to improve their quality of life, fight for access to electricity, and grow their domestic industry they will need this space. The idea that poorer countries shouldn’t use the atmospheric commons to develop is not only unjust, it’s unrealistic. Failing to take this reality into account at the negotiations will doom the people and economies of all nations.

How Low Can You Go?

The implications for developed countries here in Bonn and on the road to Copenhagen -where world leaders are supposed to reach an agreement that will pick up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off in 2012 – are profound. To repay their emissions debt they must commit to drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries are calling for cuts of 45 to almost 80 percent from 1990 levels in the next 10 years. Some researchers are saying that to avoid a climate catastrophe reductions from rich countries actually have to plunge to 100 percent – and then go negative by the middle of the century.

Even with a clean energy and land use revolution, it’s close to impossible for countries like the U.S. to meet such ambitious targets. The balance of their climate debt, then, will have to be repaid in a transfer of money and clean technology to developing countries so that they can create new economies that are low-carbon and still meet the needs of their citizens. The price tag will be along the lines of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Industrialized countries have balked at the sum, but their obligation to deliver this support is already enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a global agreement which even the U.S. signed. And if the bank bailouts have taught us anything, it’s that where there’s a political will, there’s a way to mobilize trillions of dollars.

Meena Raman, researcher and legal advisor to the Third World Network and former Chair of Friends of the Earth International, called the technical briefing and the introduction of the climate debt concept “one of the most important moments in the history of the Convention.” But if climate talks in Copenhagen are to yield a just and effective result, the conversation must move beyond concepts to commitments from nations with the greatest historical responsibility.