President Obama pledges commitment to fight climate change

At the 2009 United Nations climate meetings in Copenhagen, President Obama pledged that the United States would achieve greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 17% from 2005 levels by 2020. Surprisingly and according to Resources for the Future, a new discussion paper, “U.S. Status on Climate Change Mitigation,” finds that even without a national price on carbon, the U.S. will fall just shy of that pledge thanks to new regulations, lower natural gas prices, and regional carbon-cutting efforts.

In fact, the United States is on target to achieve GHG reductions of 16.3% from 2005 levels in 2020, close to meeting its pledge through what EcoMotion calls “external factors.” This not only puts the United States close to meeting its pledge, but it is likely to result in the nation surpassing other proposed targets. That said, the United States has reportedly not put a plan in place to provide its share of the pledge by developed countries to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 for climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries.