America's new climate unilateralism: a better approach to Copenhagen.

• Author: Charnovitz, Steve

Years of vital time were wasted during the 2000s when the United States refused to join the Kyoto Protocol on climate and the Bush Administration stood aloof from many ongoing international initiatives to better manage greenhouse gas emissions. So when Todd Stem, the current U.S. Special Envoy for Climate, made his maiden speech to the Ad Hoc Working Groups on climate, he received spirited applause. Speaking in late March 2009 in Bonn, Stern told the assembly, "We are very glad to be back. We want to make up for lost time, and we are seized with the urgency of the task before us."

As this essay is penned ahead of the pivotal U.N. climate conference at Copenhagen in December 2009, no one doubts that the United States is back in the game. But being back is one thing and playing the game cooperatively according to the roles is another. In targeting other countries with new import charges for climate, the legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009 strikes a confrontational posture that is, in some ways, just as unilateral as the much-criticized U.S. policies of the Bush era.

The trade measures included in the American Clean Energy and Security Act direct the Environmental Protection Agency, beginning in 2020, to require importers of certain products from certain countries to purchase an "international reserve allowance." This required purchase would in effect be a financial charge upon the imported product. The official summary of the Act calls it a "border adjustment for energy-intensive trade-exposed sectors." The Act itself explains that the purpose of the import charge is to minimize the likelihood of carbon leakage as a result of the differences in U.S. environmental compliance costs and the compliance costs in the other country arising from its climate policies. "Carbon leakage" is defined as a substantial increase in greenhouse gas emissions in other countries if that increase is caused by an incremental increase in the U.S. cost of production resulting from the Act.

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In a recent article in this magazine ("Cap-and-Trade Protectionism?" Summer 2009), Martin Feldstein argues that a policy of imposing tariffs on imports to offset the advantage of countries with lower prices for carbon "is just the kind of protectionism that governments have been working to eliminate since the start of the GATT processes more than fifty years ago." Insofar as the House climate bill is motivated by offsetting...