What did Hillary's $100B offer at COP15 mean?

(Photo of Clinton with U.S. negotiator Todd Stern at COP15 from Flickr and photographer Andy Revkin)

When I woke up this morning to the news that Hillary Clinton had announced in Copenhagen that the U.S. would raise $100 billion a year for poor countries to fight and adapt to climate change, I was amazed that Barack Obama hadn’t saved such big news for his speech tomorrow.

Here’s what she said, when she arrived last night, or was it this morning? The half-day time difference really throws me.

“The United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address climate change needs of developing countries.”

A lot of qualifying terms there: work with others, toward a goal, jointly mobilizing…. It wasn’t exactly a declaration that the U.S. government, perhaps with bonus money thrown in by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street fat cats (and maybe some help from Mr. Bill’s Foundation connections) would put up all the money.

As I began to parse the language and read more reports, some things became clearer – i.e. that she was sent to offer a carrot to African and other very poor nations to use a stick on China and India to allow their emission cuts to be monitored.

She noted such a fund was only for the poorest countries (i.e. not China) and it depended on a climate agreement including verifiable commitments to cut emissions or carbon intensity (i.e. China).

Other things became less clear – i.e. how much of the $100B will come from the U.S.? How much public and how much private? Will the billions already pledged by Japan, the EU and others for the next three years be part of that fund? Are we simply echoing a pledge by Europe to help set up a worldwide $100 billion fund for the long term?

According to U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the pending climate bill here contains $5B a year in proceeds from auctioning cap-and-trade allowances that would go to developing countries. Others are suggesting some of the money could come from $60B in annual subsidies for fossil fuels.

Whatever the case, response by other countries and environmentalists is positive and seen as perhaps the “breakthrough” the climate talks needed to avoid a failed conference. It suggests a long-term commitment by the U.S.
This may be the only way Obama can “lead,” given the stinginess of the Congress in committing to cut emissions.

Although poor countries say they need much, much more than $100 billion as droughts ravage some countries and rising seas threaten to obliterate others, their point person at the conference, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, acknowledged they would accept $30B in the short term, $50B by 2015 and $100B by 2020.

Some of this money would help avoid deforestation, which causes about 20% of the world’s greenhouse gases. (Did you know the world is losing an acre of forest every second? I read that in Al Gore’s new book, “Our Choice.”)

An agreement to pay countries to avoid clearing their forests for agriculture has been one of the more likely outcomes of this conference.

World leaders are starting to arrive. We’ll see what the coming day brings (it’s already getting to be evening Thursday in Copenhagen).

(Sources: Sierra Club, Greenwire, Washington Post, LA Times, climateprogress.org)