At an
Opportunity 08 forum in Iowa, Senior Fellow David Sandalow discusses the challenge of leadership on climate change for the next president.
"Climate change leadership begins at home. The best thing we can do to get the rest of the world to act is to act ourselves. So the first thing the next President should do is exert real leadership to make sure the United States enacts a cap and trade program that limits heat trapping gases.
"Once that is in place, then we're no longer the alcoholic at the bar stool preaching temperance. You need to have some credibility and I would take that forward and I would look to the world trade regime as a model and use lots of different forums.
"In some ways what we tried to do at Kyoto was to, as
Bill [Antholis] was saying, leap over 50 years and go immediately to something which is very difficult. I think I would pursue those types of efforts but I would also do bilateral agreements. The U.S. and China together are about 40-percent of global emissions. If the U. S. and China could come up with a bilateral deal that would be huge. Regional deals, bilateral deals, global deals."