This year's US presidential election is unlikely to have a great
impact on the consistency of the country's climate policy, Andy
Karsner, US assistant secretary of energy, told Xinhua
Wednesday.
Speaking at a press briefing on the sidelines of the ongoing
major economies meeting on energy security and climate change held
at Honolulu in Hawaii January 30-31, he said that the groundwork of
US climate policy is actually laid down by mid-level officials who
are bipartisan.
"We are building a continuity in the civil service," he said,
referring to the fact that although there will be a new
administration next year, those career civil service officials will
be still making policies by then.
Karsner also argued that whoever becomes the new president,
whether Republican or Democrat, he or she must make climate policy
decisions based on broad bipartisan support.
He noted that the energy bill President George W. Bush signed
last year has already demonstrated that kind of bipartisan
consensus.
On the prospect that a new president will probably not resist
the mandatory pollution reduction targets like Bush, Karsner argued
that may not be the case.
He said the United States has its own understanding of the
issue.
If it is mandatory, Karsner said, it shall be a law which will
need bipartisan support before the president's signing.
Also, the US government has some mandatory regulation in place
in other areas, including the energy efficiency standard.
However, most major presidential candidates are actually
embracing for the idea of mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas
emission.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two front-runners in the
race for the Democratic presidential nomination, have all pledged
to cut US emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by the year
2050, and both of them accept that this can only be achieved by
legal caps on emissions.
The leading Republican candidate, John McCain, has made similar
promises, except that he is only aiming for a 65-percent cut by
2050.
(Xinhua News Agency January 31, 2008)
