Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

Obama's Copenhagen Deal

How it came about—and why it may not be a real deal.

—By David Corn and Kate Sheppard

| Fri Dec. 18, 2009 5:46 PM PST

The final deal at the Copenhagen climate summit, which was convened to develop a comprehensive international response to the threat of global warming, came down to a behind-closed-doors conversation among some of the most powerful people in the world about the difference between two terms: "examination and assessment" and "international consultations and analysis."

Then again, there may not have been a final deal. Late on Friday night, President Barack Obama announced that an agreement had been reached, establishing a minimalist accord that would not set a firm schedule with hard-and-fast targets for reducing emissions. But after Obama held a press conference to declare semi-victory—"this is going to be a first step"—and jetted back to Washington, European officials said nothing was in the bag. And Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G77 bloc of least developed nations, claimed there was no deal. "What has happened today confirms what we have been suspicious of that a deal will be imposed by United States, with the help of the Danish government, on all nations of the world," he said.

This raised the question, was the Obama deal merely a side deal that would be agreed to by some nations but not all? A convenient bypass of international climate negotiations?

[Read the full article]

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GOP Reps Regale Copenhagen with Scientific Knowledge

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Dec. 18, 2009 12:03 PM PST

Six Republican members of Congress brought their questionable grasp of climate science to Copenhagen on Friday, hoping to capitalize on the fact that a final deal is still up in the air. Their mission, they said, was to inform the folks at the summit that the US doesn't plan to finalize a cap-and-trade plan anytime soon. But they spent most of their presser spouting off dubious, if amusing, views on climate science.

Take, for instance, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who announced that "the premise that mankind through the emissions of CO2, is causing the planet to warm...has never been independently analyzed or tested by any scientific group." Known for his unusual and unorthodox scientific views, Barton spoke at length on the matter. "I respect the Texas climatologists," he said. "But it's hot in Texas in the summer and it's cold in Texas in the winter. And I can't tell if that's going to change much one way or another. We don't have an ice cap in Texas, so before we make a policy decision I think it's a fair question to try to develop a theory that appears to more fit the facts than this theory appears to."

Luckily, Barton happens to have his own theory on carbon dioxide:

I might point out just the basic theory. CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere. If the volume were equivalent to a United States football field, 100 yards long, 300 feet long CO2 would make up about an eighth of an inch of that field. The dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor. The dominant temperature regulator is based on what we know about the science is cloud formation. The CO2 theory doesn't appear to take that into account.

And on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's preeminent body of climate scientists:

The IPCC scientific group is a very insular. I don't want to be too impolite here, but they do not appear to be interested in finding the truth as much as they appear to be interested in protecting themselves and manipulating the data in a way that proves their preconceived conclusion. That is not the scientific method that I was taught in college.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

Copenhagen: Waxman Weighs In

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Dec. 18, 2009 8:51 AM PST

Henry Waxman, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and lead author of the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June, is among the official US delegation attending the Copenhagen summit. On Thursday, Waxman and five other Democratic representatives made the case that this legislation, among other things, is evidence that Americans are engaged on the issue of climate change and looking to move forward on an international accord.

By Friday, the mood on reaching an agreement in Copenhagen had dimmed, and President Barack Obama and US negotiators were still deep in discussions with other nations late into the afternoon. I caught a few minutes with Waxman shortly after Obama's speech to gauge his opinion on the negotiations and the likelihood that the US will be able to deliver a climate law similar to his bill.

Mother Jones: How are you feeling about the state of negotiations, especially after President Obama's remarks today?

Waxman: President Obama gave an excellent speech, and just said to everybody, the bottom line is we're all in this together. We need binding agreements, we must reduce the carbon emissions. He just told everybody in this conference not to dither, but to get to work. He himself has been in serious negotiations. I hope he's successful.

Mother Jones: Do you think there's an opportunity for a breakthrough here?

Waxman: I'm not sure. A lot will depend on China. If China agrees to quantifiable and verifiable reductions in carbon emissions and not to be part of the requirements that are placed on everybody else, even though they're the world's number one emitter of carbon pollution now, then I don't see what agreement can be reached, except maybe a framework for future discussions, but not the kind of agreement we'd all hoped for.

Mother Jones: What influence do you think the outcome here will have on the Senate and finishing off the bill you started in the House?

Waxman: I think a good result from the Copenhagen conference would be very helpful in influencing people in the United States and their representatives in the US Senate. But our legislation is not for the world. Our legislation is for the US interests, and our interest is to become for our national security purposes less dependent on foreign oil. We need the jobs that will be created by the technology that will result from [reducing] carbon emissions, and we need to reduce the carbon as well in order to reduce the threat to our environment.

Can Obama Sign A Climate Treaty Without Congress?

Why some environmentalists believe the president has the power to sidestep the Senate and commit the US to a global pact.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Dec. 18, 2009 1:01 AM PST

In 1997, in the Japanese city of Kyoto, the Clinton administration agreed to a groundbreaking treaty to combat global warming. And that's when the trouble started. The Senate had unanimously refused to approve the Kyoto Protocol, and in the end the Clinton administration didn't even submit it for a vote in the upper chamber. This made the US both the world's biggest polluter and, ultimately, the only industrialized nation to reject the accord. Now, as world leaders attempt to negotiate a new climate deal at Copenhagen, environmentalists want to avoid a repeat of the Kyoto debacle. That's why some green groups are urging Obama to do an end-run around the Senate and assert that his presidential powers empower him to commit the US to a climate treaty on his own.

Under Article II of the constitution, a president can sign an international treaty, but it must by ratified by two-thirds of the Senate before it becomes law. But there are also other types of international accords, like trade deals, that can be entered via a congressional-executive agreement, which requires only the approval of a simple majority in both houses of Congress. There’s no ironclad rule that determines which international pacts fall into which category. But neither route is easy. The last treaty to win ratification was the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in 2002, which reduced the nuclear arsenals of Russia and US. Trade agreements are no picnic, either—the most recent pact approved was with Peru in 2007, while Bush administration deals with Colombia, South Korea and Panama are still languishing on Capitol Hill. When you consider that a domestic cap-and-trade bill has yet to win backing from the 60 senators required to even bring the measure up for a vote, the chances of securing 67 supporters for a major international treaty seem very slim indeed.

Against that backdrop, some environmental groups and legal experts are calling on Obama to take unilateral action. At a briefing in Copenhagen last week, Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an Arizona-based conservation group, argued that the president could become a party to a binding climate agreement simply by signing an executive agreement, bypassing Congress altogether. There is "very solid legal footing for negotiating an executive agreement here in Copenhagen," argued Kassie Siegel, senior counsel of CBD, which has issued a new report outlining what it sees as Obama’s legal options for entering a climate accord. Friends of the Earth has also endorsed this concept. "If he wants to lead the world on climate change, he has to step up to the plate and commit the US to the treaty process," said FOE president Erich Pica.

[Read the full article]

The 0.5 Degree Question

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Dec. 17, 2009 12:13 PM PST

In the final 48 hours of the Copenhagen climate conference, one of the biggest differences remains a very small number: half a degree.

While most of the attention here is focused on the remaining divide between the United States and China when it comes to measuring and verifying emissions reductions, a much larger split remains between the 102 countries that have called for a limit on temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius and the much more powerful nations that have called for a 2 degree target.

The nations pushing for a 1.5 degree target include members of the Alliance of Small Island States, the G77, the bloc of Least Developed Countries, the Africa Group, and several nations from Latin America and Asia. But there is significant pressure being exerted on these nations to consent to the 2 degree target that has been embraced the United States, European Union, China, and other nations here seen as the most powerful players in a final deal. But leaders from the 1.5 camp say they are holding firm on their target, and won't sign onto a deal that calls for anything else.

"I will not sign anything less than 1.5," said Apisai Ielemia, Prime Minister of the tiny island nation of Tuvalu, which may become one of the first casualties of global warming. The low-lying Pacific island nation made headlines last week for shutting down talks with calls for a legally binding treaty. Now they're staking out their desire for a deal at this summit that will not condemn them to rising tides, they say. "This meeting is about our future existence," said Ielemia. "We don't want to disappear from this earth ... We want to exist as a nation, because we have a fundamental right to live beside you."

"For developed countries to choose to not use that figure, is morally, politically irresponsible," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G77.

The debate over what figure to put in the final agreement here maybe meaningless, however, if the corresponding emissions reductions goals would not put the world on a path to stay below that limit. A leaked draft analysis from the UNFCCC of the commitments put on the table from developed countries states that what they have pledged so far would lead to a 3 degree temperature rise. If targets aren't raised, "global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway," the document states.

Meanwhile, frustrations remain high among developing nations over what they see as pressure from rich nations to consent to a higher target. "We are not yielding to these pressures, because our future is not negotiable," said Ielemia.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]