Which one speaks for America?

There Are Two Rival U.S. Delegations At The Bonn Climate Summit. Which One Speaks For America?

Dave Keating , Contributor

  

I cover energy, environment and EU politics in Brussels Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
 

People walk past the 'Climate Planet,' an exhibition and film venue sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, near the plenary halls of the COP 23 United Nations Climate Change Conference on Monday in Bonn, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The tiny city of Bonn, Germany, was bracing itself Monday for the 23,000 delegates expected for the U.N. climate summit on the banks of the River Rhine. Torturous negotiations will take place to hammer out the rules of the Paris climate agreement signed two years ago.
When they’re not arguing over targets, the delegates will be strolling through the massive hall next door, where various countries are showcasing their efforts to fight climate change. China, France, Malaysia, Korea, the U.K., even tiny Luxembourg, all have a presence.
But there is one notable absence this year. For the first time ever, the United States has no pavilion at the annual U.N. climate summit.
That is because President Donald Trump announced earlier this year he intends to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. But under U.N. rules, that withdrawal will not take place for three years. So although the U.S. government has no pavilion, Trump has still sent a negotiating team to try to influence the Paris Agreement rule book, which will be devised at this summit.

Despite leaving the global climate regime, Trump wants to keep America’s seat at the table to craft its rules. The question is whether the other countries will let him.
The task of these U.S. negotiators will be made all the more difficult by the presence of a rival American delegation. The U.S. government may not have a pavilion, but a group of U.S. governors, mayors and business leaders are setting opening a “U.S. Climate Action Center Pavilion” at the Bonn summit on Thursday.
The coalition, called We Are Still In, is made up of more than 2,500 American business and political leaders, led by California Governor Jerry Brown and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. They say they speak for the true wishes of Americans, and they have significant power behind them. The sub-national political leaders alone represent 130 million Americans and $6.2 trillion of the U.S. economy.

Henry Kissinger once famously asked, “who do I call if I want to call Europe?” Today in Europe, they are asking that of America.
Both the official and unofficial delegations are claiming to be the “true” voice of Americans when it comes to climate. It has left the bemused representatives in Bonn wondering which one of them to speak to in order to get a real sense of what America is thinking, and what it intends to do in the future.
Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks the world should listen to the unofficial delegation. "My view is that the sub-national delegates truly represent the interests of Americans, they are closer to public opinion on this,” he said in Bonn.
“But on the issue of negotiating though, under our system of government it is the executive branch of the federal government that represents the U.S. in these negotiations,” he added. “The Trump administration has made clear that they are going to stay involved even though they have said they will pull out. Countries can’t negotiate with Governor Brown, they have to negotiate with the person in power. But they also understand that this is an aberration, and whoever takes power after President Trump will restore the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement.”
This has emerged as the key question. For those who believe the U.S. will not actually leave, it makes more sense to talk to the U.S. representatives who will be in charge after it comes back – and to ostracize the Trump delegates to make sure they can’t sabotage the Paris deal from the inside. But for those who believe the U.S. really will leave, it makes sense to focus on Trump's team to see what the U.S. can do outside the deal.
Brown vs. Pruitt
The official U.S. delegation was meant to be small. But there were rumors in Bonn Monday that Scott Pruitt, Trump’s head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will make a surprise visit next week with a larger force. Pruitt is a climate change denier who has said he “would not agree” that carbon dioxide from human activity is the primary source of climate change.
The purpose of his visit may be to counter the presence of California Governor Brown, who is expected to arrive on Saturday to make a big announcement on behalf of the anti-Trump governors and mayors, called ‘America’s Pledge.’
This raises the prospect of Brown and Pruitt shadowing each other throughout next week, each claiming to speak for the United States. Brown has already been doing this worldwide. Last week he was at the Vatican, where he addressed a gathering of religious leaders and called Trump’s pronouncements on climate change a “lie within a lie.” He has been keen to stress that, were it a country, California would be the eighth largest economy in the world.
With neither delegation having arrived in any significant force yet, people at the Bonn summit on Monday were left to speculate about the American turf war that is about to unfold in Bonn. And many hadn't made up their minds yet about who they should call if they want to talk to America.

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