Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/10/2015
Senate Republicans on the Committee on Environment and Public Work this week voiced concern at the possibility that President Barack Obama may agree to a global climate deal in December without the approval of the Senate, going so far as to suggest the Senate intervene in the process. The new climate deal will be negotiated at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris. According to the GOP Senators, the President has misled member countries to believe he has the authority to sign on to the deal on his own. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested that the Senate may want take steps to make member states aware that the President does not have the backing of the Senate in an agreement. “It seems to me that congress, in resisting a President’s overreach, could do something like Senator [Tom] Cotton [R-Ark.] did with regard to Iran, write a letter and make sure that people who sign on with the United States know that that’s not binding on the United States,” Sessions said.
Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) noted that similar claims were made prior to COP 15, which was held in Copenhagen in 2009. “I know something about this. I mentioned the Copenhagen agreement, when I went over. Those 191 countries assumed, since they had the Vice-President, they had the whole group … over there assuring them, including Obama, that once those people agreed, it doesn’t take legislation. They probably still assume that today,” Inhofe said.
The effects of such a commitment being made without the support of the Senate could put future administrations in a difficult situation, Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, said during the hearing. “The next administration could certainly say, ‘They made a political commitment. We repudiate it. That was their commitment. You shouldn’t have trusted them.’ Of course, that is an awkward thing to do, because it does undermine the credibility of American Presidents. So I think it’s lamentable that President Obama is putting his successor in that position, either ‘Repudiate my extra-Constitutional commitment, or else undermine American credibility.’ But of course, they’ll be tempted to say; maybe they’ll be under a lot of pressure to say, ‘I, as Obama’s successor, cannot be committed by his unilateral posturing,’” Rabkin said.
It remains uncertain, however, what the Paris agreement will look like at the end of negotiations. It may or may not be legally binding, for example. “I think that it’s important to keep in mind that the administration has said if they come back with an agreement that they believe legally requires to be passed through Congress they will take it that route. So the idea here that we know what the agreement looks like and therefore can justify what kind of authority it requires, we won’t really know until we get the outcome in Paris. There’s some speculation about those things, but we don’t really know the answer to that question,” Sarah Ladislaw, Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies said during the hearing.
