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.

Kerry: US Must Pay "Fair Share" Of Climate Aid

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Dec. 1, 2009 1:35 PM PST

How much money will the rich world muster to help poorer countries adapt to the devastating effects of climate change and curb their emissions? That's one of the essential elements that negotiators must tackle at the Copenhagen climate summit next week. And the biggest question mark in the equation is the US, which has not yet specified exactly how much cash it's prepared to kick in. Now John Kerry, the key senator in the climate debate, is urging the Obama administration to be more generous.

The proposed 2010 budget from the Obama administration would devote $1.2 billion per year to international climate funds. The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House would direct about 7 percent of the revenues of a cap-and-trade plan to international adaptation and technology funding in the initial years, which could total around $5 billion per year by 2020, according to an analysis by Resources for the Future. The proposed Senate bill offers similar levels of funding.

Obviously, there's a big difference between the numbers coming out of the White House and Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, Senate Foreign Relations committee chair John Kerry (D-Mass.) wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking the administration to address the "large gap" between the Congressional figures and the budget. Kerry wants the US should kick much more than the amount forecast in the 2010 budget, in order to demonstrate its commitment to addressing the problem of climate change. He suggested $3 billion for 2011, routed through agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

"[A]s we approach the Copenhagen climate change negotiations, the global community has agreed that $10 billion is required annually in fast-start financing to support immediate international climate change priorities," wrote Kerry. "The United States must be prepared to contribute its fair share of this obligation."

As we noted yesterday, the European Union is under fire for plans to redirect existing aid money to climate rather than finding new funds. The US, too, will be under pressure to commit significant amounts of new money to help the world's most vulnerable nations. But in the middle of a lingering recession, this will be a tough political sell.

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Chuck Norris Takes on Obama's Climate One World Order

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Dec. 1, 2009 9:14 AM PST

Chuck Norris is worried about climate change. Not the environmental effects caused by rising temperatures—that phenomenon, he thinks, is a "con game." No, he's worried that Obama and other world leaders are using global warming as an excuse to create "a one world order" when they meet in Copenhagen next week.

That's what Norris argued on a recent appearance on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, warning that if the US signs on to a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, "Our country as we know it now will no longer exist."

"My big worry, is that we as a nation, if we start having to be obligated to other countries ... Like, in this conference they're going to try to take our money and send it to third world countries, because of since we spend so much oil, and these other countries have suffered, then we're going to give our money to these third world countries."

In his Townhall.com column, Norris has also called attention to the phrases in draft versions of the negotiating text indicating that climate negotiations are a stealth attempt to create a unified world government:

Phrases such as "creation of new levels of cooperation," "a shift in global investment patterns," "adjust global economic growth patterns," "integrated system of financial and technology transfer mechanisms," "new agreed post-2012 institutional arrangement and legal framework," "new institutional arrangement will provide technical and financial support for developing countries," "global fund," etc., are messages that make one wonder how far this political body's arm would reach into our country and force our hands into others.

All this leads Norris to the inevitable conclusion: "Now, if that isn't one powerful intergovernmental or global-governmental group overseeing and manipulating America's and others' economic and political conditions, I don't know what is."

Video below the jump:

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Fight Over Climate Aid Threatens to Derail Copenhagen Talks

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Nov. 30, 2009 2:38 PM PST

Less than a week before the Copenhagen climate conference begins, confidential documents reveal that the EU is pushing to use existing aid money, not new funds, to help poorer nations reduce emissions and adapt to climate change—a stance that NGOs say could derail the entire summit.

According to documents obtained by The Guardian, EU negotiators have removed lines from a proposed draft agreement that call for a new climate fund for poor countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The text says the EU "cannot accept" proposed language that would call for climate aid to be "additional to" and "separate from" other development assistance funds.

If climate funds were to come entirely from existing pools of money, that would pose a huge problem for international negotiations. The United Nations has estimated that poor countries need as much as $170 billion per year to adapt to climate change. That's $50 billion more than developed countries spent on aid last year.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

Hope For Copenhagen?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Nov. 30, 2009 11:00 AM PST

The climate summit that kicks off in Copenhagen next week may turn out to be more eventful than you might expect, thanks to significant promises from the US and China in recent days.

Last week, the White House confirmed that Obama will make a pit stop at the summit and announce that the United States is committing to reducing planet-warming emissions in the neighborhood of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

The next day, the Chinese government announced a goal of reducing their carbon intensity—the amount of greenhouse gas emitted per unit of gross domestic product—by up to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Since the US and China together are responsible for 40 percent of the world's emissions, these commitments are expected to have a real impact on the negotiations.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Obama to Make Pit Stop in Copenhagen

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Nov. 25, 2009 9:06 AM PST

Good news: Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen for the beginning of the United Nations summit on climate change next month. He'll make an appearance at the meeting on December 9, according to an administration official—a brief stopover en route to pick up his Nobel Prize in Oslo the next day.

Really good news: Obama plans to put a solid target for US emissions cuts on the table when he gets there. Obama will promise delegates at the summit that US will cut emissions "in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020," according to a White House official.

Not so good news: He's not planning to return for the end of the summit, which runs through Dec. 18. That's when approximately 65 other heads of state and government are expected to attend.

What to make of this? Well, now that it's clear that there's not going to be a final treaty in Copenhagen, the presence of heads of state is not quite as important. The real work is still to be done by negotiators.

But Obama's early appearance will help set the tone for the event, showing high-level US engagement with the issue (and perhaps even a desire on Obama's part to earn that Nobel he'll receive the next day.) Appearing later—when it probably wouldn't influence the conversation one way or another—might only lead to a repeat of what happened with the Olympics in October. If Obama shows up to much fanfare and nothing happens, that will only create bad press.

The emissions cuts promise is the really major news here. Having a solid commitment from the US—one involving actual numbers—is expected to lubricate the climate talks significantly. Sure, the 17 percent figure is not nearly as high as the reductions called for by the European Union, Japan, many developing nations—OK, basically everyone else in the world. Yet the hope is that if the US shows its cards, other key players (like China and India) will also start talking in real figures. Obama showing up in person to present those numbers is a pretty big deal.

The White House also announced that a number of cabinet secretaries and other top officials will make an appearance in Copenhagen during the conference. Scheduled to attend and give speeches at the summit are Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner. Their presentations, the White House said in a press release, will "underline the historic progress the Obama Administration has made to address climate change and create a new energy future."