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Presidential Leadership on Global Climate Change: Opportunities and Constraints
Jeffry Burnam
Visiting Assistant Professor of Government
Department of Government
Georgetown University
Presidential leadership on the environment matters (Vig 103), including on the international environment (Daynes and Sussman). Butwhen dopresidents lead on international environmental issues,what roles do they play when they do and how effective are they in achieving their objectives?
Executive branch agencies with differing missions and constituencies are likely to disagree on the terms or even on the need for a new international treaty. As Richard Neustadt says: “Executive officials need decisions, and political protection and a referee for fights” (p. 6).
So, first, a president may choose to refereeexecutive branch disputesover international environmental issues as they arise.Second, a president may work to persuadekey legislators whose support he may need that it would be in their interest to support his proposed treaty (Neustadt, p 41).[1] Third, a president may choose to bypass an unfriendly Congress and use executive orders or other administrative means to secure his objectives (Howell). To support his interventions in any of these three roles, a president may build supportby going public (Kernell) or by going local(Cohen 2009), a technique that has become increasingly attractive given the limits that media fragmentation imposes on appeals to the general public.
So presidents must be strategic. To be successful they must “facilitate change by recognizing opportunities in their environments and fashioning strategies and tactics needed to exploit them” (Edwards 188). Edwards suggests this is the “essential” leadership skill (p. 6). Equally important are the constraints on the president’s ability to lead. They often derive from the same factors that provide opportunities for leadership.
In the case of international environmental treaties, the constraints and opportunities a president confronts include: the state of the science, economic impact, public perceptions of the need for action, congressional and interest group support or opposition, and the presence of absence of so-called “action forcing” events. His success in recognizing these constraints and exploiting these opportunities will largely determine the effectiveness of his interventions.
In this paper, I draw upon insights derived from these presidential leadership theories and from original interviews with high-level officials who worked closely with presidents from Reagan to Obama on ozone layer and climate change protection, given the constraints and opportunities these presidents confronted. But these have evolved, so a new kind of presidentialleadership is both possible and needed. That is strategic advocacyin which the President through his words and deeds stresses the moral urgency of addressing global climate change and employs the techniques most likely to yield success in a given instance.
The Montreal Protocol on Ozone Layer Protection
Background
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) is “perhaps the most successful international agreement to date” (Kofi Annan) and one in which the United States and U.S. Presidents have played a critical role.
The ozone layer is in process of recovering. The ecology and the global environment have been protected. New industries have been created, and consumers have generally benefitted from more efficient means of refrigeration (UNEP 2012). In the United States alone, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) projects that 22 million cataract cases and 6.3 million skin cancer deaths will be avoided at an estimated savings in health care costs of $4.2 trillion over the period 1990-2165.
(US EPA 2010).
Ozone in the stratosphere forms a thin layer that protects humans, animals, fish and crops from the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. In 1974, scientists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland demonstrated theoretically that certain industrial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had the potential to migrate into the stratosphere and be broken down by UV rays, creating significant amounts of free chlorine radicals. These chlorine radicals would generate a complex chemical reaction that would gradually deplete the stratospheric ozone layer (Anderson and Sarma, 9-10).
Stratospheric ozone protection entered the policy arena long before the White House became involved, which is also typical of many presidential legislative initiatives (Rudalevige, 81). In 1978, the EPA banned the use of aerosols in deodorant and other spray cans, a popular move that industry also supported because substitutes for aerosol sprays were readily available.[2] But the European Commission (EC) did not follow suit, adopting instead a loose cap only on CFC production. Public interest subsided and attempts to further regulate CFCs came to a temporary halt with the demise of the Carter Administration.
An Action Forcing Event: The Ozone Hole
In 1986, surprising news of a large winter depletion in the Antarctic ozone layer (the Antarctic Ozone Hole) led industry officials on both sides of the Atlantic to begin thinking about the prospects for international controls. At the time, U.S. industry favored a global ban on CFC usage in aerosols, whereas European industry was prepared to discuss only a production cap. Japanese industry also had a keen interest in the issue, since CFCs were used as a solvent to clean electronics; so did the USSR, bothas a significant producer and a significant consumer of CFCs. As time went on, Japan and Russia came to favor strong controls, but the European Community held out almost until the bitter end, largely due to the intransigence of the British chemical industry (Rowlands, 101-123).
The unexpected discovery of the Antarctic Ozone Hole confounded scientists and policy makers alike because it raised the possibility that relatively small increases in CFCs could lead to much larger (non-linear) reductions in the ozone layer once a certain threshold was reached.
In September 1986, the U.S. industry-led Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy switched its opposition to controls and advocated a “reasonable global limit” on increases in CFCs. Then, in October 1986, U.S. industry leader DuPont called for an actual global reduction in CFC production. These switches can be attributed to a number of factors, most notably to DuPont’s capacity to develop marketable potential substitutes for CFCs as well as to its fear that the United States Government might decide to act unilaterally, placing it at a competitive disadvantage (Casin and Dray, 308).
David Doniger
David Doniger joined the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1978, taking a lead for NRDC and for the environmental community on the Montreal Protocol starting in 1986 and continuing to the present day. Doniger remembers how bitterly industry in the 70s had “decried” the science of ozone depletion and how strongly industry had opposed the Carter Administration’s proposal to regulate CFCs in 1980. He recalls that at an informally designed United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) workshop hosted by the United States in Leesburg, Virginia, DuPont presented an economic analysis that found the alternatives to CFCs to be too costly. But when Doniger asked them if their analysis would change if CFCs were further restricted, by law, “their answer was somewhere between ‘we hadn’t thought of that’ to ‘yes’!”
EPA Administrator Lee Thomas
In the fall of 1986, as the Department of State was seeking an interagency determination of the U.S. negotiating position, EPA Administrator Lee Thomas intervened at a critical moment. Thomas had attended the Leesburg Workshop and had testified at a Senate Environment Committee hearing in June 1986. He knew the issue in detail. In an October 1986 meeting with EPA professionals, Thomas surprised them by recommending a phase out of CFCs and not just a production freeze. Here is how Thomas puts it:
It came through in the discussion that from a regulatory point of view we needed a more clear-cut goal to work with. From a scientific point of view a phase out was the correct goal because these were offending chemicals. All this discussion they were having about a freeze seemed to blur the fact that this was the ultimate goal…. I felt that a phase out was something we could defend better than what they were coming up with (Casin and Dray, 310-311).
Scientific Uncertainty: The Negotiator’s View
Ambassador Richard E. Benedick was the lead U.S. negotiator on the Montreal Protocol from 1985 to 1987. In Ozone Diplomacy, he notes that the science of ozone depletion was far from certain at the time that the Montreal Protocol was negotiated:
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the treaty was its imposition of substantial short-term economic costs to protect human health and the environment against unproven future dangers—dangers that rested on scientific theories rather than on firm data (Benedick, 2).
However, according to Benedick, scientific uncertainty actually helped the State Department to propose the middle ground of a phased reduction in ozone layer depleting substances. The phased reduction allowed industry time to make available acceptable substitutes for CFCs, thus maintaining industry support. At the same time, environmentalists were pleased that the ultimate goal of the U.S proposal was the virtual elimination of global emissions of ozone layer depleting chemicals. Major U.S. producers of CFCs (DuPont in particular) supported a 50% reduction for the interesting reason that a lesser reduction of, say, only 20% or a mere freeze would not provide them with a sufficient incentive to produce the chemical alternatives to CFCs they knew they could develop for the
market if given time and an incentive to do so (Benedick, 51-58).
The Assistant Secretary of State: John Negroponte
Ambassador Benedick was not only the lead U.S. negotiator of the Montreal Protocol; he was at the same time the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment (E-DAS) in the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science (OES), a position that I once held so I am aware of its responsibilities. The E-DAS needs support as required from the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and from the Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Environment and Science, who at the time was Ambassador John Negroponte. Negroponte recalls that while Benedick “drove” the negotiations, it was up to him and to EPA Administrator Lee Thomas “to shepherd the Montreal Protocol through the crucial higher levels of the international and the domestic political processes.” He and Thomas “pushed this thing through against considerable odds” with support from Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead and Secretary George Shultz. Two tasks were important. One was to persuade key countries of the merits of the science, especially Europe, Russia and Japan. So Thomas and Negroponte worked with their counterparts in foreign governments and deployed U.S. scientific and technical experts to meet with their scientific and technical counterparts. Nor did Secretary Shultz hesitate to inform foreign leaders of his support for our negotiators. The other task was internal. According to Negroponte, the President’s Science Advisor William Graham “didn’t believe in the science” and Interior Secretary Donald Hodel took issue with State’s position. Negroponte and Thomas “worked to overcome those” views when the matter was elevated to the Domestic Policy Council (Negroponte).
A Friendly Congress
In the spring of 1987, the Office of Management and Budget had set up an interagency working group to reexamine the State Department’s negotiating position. The OMB review was soon elevated to the cabinet- level Domestic Policy Council (DPC). The DPC’s options paper included Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel’s “personal protection option” that proposed (among other things) that the public be urged to wear sunscreen, sunglasses and broad brimmed hats. A calculated leak of Hodel’s views by his own staffgenerated an uproar (Doniger). The Washington Post’s Herblock penned a famous cartoon that showed fish wearing sunglasses! (The actual damage to fish from UV radiation results from its potential negative effect on plankton, the source of all ocean life.)
Secretary of State George Shultz
Secretary of State George Shultz did not believe that the Domestic Policy Council was an appropriate forum to determine the Administration’s position in an international treaty negotiation. But that did not matter so much because Shultz had “raised and carefully talked over the ozone layer issue on several occasions” in private meetings with the President that Nancy Reagan had arranged for him on pending matters. Shultz told the President that “although there was still some controversy over the science, it was quite likely that CFCs were damaging the ozone layer and if that was true, the result would be catastrophic and irreversible.” So “it made sense to take out an insurance policy.” According to Shultz, President Reagan was a “good man for grasping the essence of an issue” and he did so in this instance. So Shultz knew that if the issue were elevated to the President, Reagan would support an international treaty (Shultz).
President Ronald Reagan: The Referee
On June 18 1987 President Reagan chaired a Domestic Policy Council Meeting at which a majority of departments and agencies lined up against the State Department’s negotiating position. Neither Benedick nor Secretary of State George Shultz was present at the meeting with the President. Shultz was on travel at the time, together with Negroponte. Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead represented the Secretary and followed up the meeting by sending a letter to Chief of Staff Howard Baker to correct the distortions of the State Department options in the DPC Staff Memo. The President decided to support “virtually all of the State-EPA position” (Benedick 65-67). Benedick was in Berlin, giving a speech at the fortieth anniversary of the Marshall Plan. He vividly recalls that a young man from the U.S. Embassy delivered a sealed envelope to him with a copy of the signed presidential decision memo that had a security classification so high that it had to be burned after reading! Benedick was amazed:
Usually, it’s some compromise, but in the case of Montreal, it was 99% for our list of options, which absolutely dazzled Negroponte and me. Neither of us had ever experienced such an uncompromising resolution of (strong!) interagency disagreement (Benedick 2011b).
Reagan made one exception and selected an option that would have required the U.S. to propose at Montreal that 90% of all countries would have to ratify the treaty before it went into force:
However, the President’s instructions were that if, after every other article had been decided at Montreal, we were still unable to attain this provision I (specifically I) was to fly back to Washington and explain this at an interagency meeting and then return the same day to Montreal and accept the consensus for the easier entry-into-force provision that State had favored from the beginning. This in fact occurred (Benedick 2011b).
President Reagan had intervened toreferee an executive branch dispute in support of the State Department’s position despite significant opposition from his Cabinet and his conservative advisors; it was this strategic choice that allowed the United States to maintain its leading role in negotiating the Montreal Protocol and to forge a reputation as a world leader on the ozone depletion issue. And the President made this key decision only after having been briefed twice by the Secretary of State and after hearing both sides being presented at the Domestic Policy Council, a procedure similar that he had often employed with his “super cabinet” when he had been Governor of California (Svahn).
The President’s decision was not publicized, perhaps not to offend his “base.”There had been a rumor that Benedick was about to be fired and some European officials were surprised to learn just prior to Montreal that Benedick was still our lead negotiator(Benedick, 2001b).
Despite President Reagan’s “hidden hand” leadership[3], the outcome of the September 1987 negotiations in Montreal was far from certain (Benedick 74-76). As EPA Administrator Lee Thomas puts it:
The negotiations were quite contentious right up to Montreal. Actually they were quite difficult in Montreal with all night sessions by a smaller group of principals where we negotiated key elements of the agreement in the final hours (Thomas).
The European Community was allowed a “bubble” over its emissions to make it easier for its member nations to comply. Russia was granted some deadline adjustments to conform to its five-year economic plan. And the U.S.-backed provision to require that 90% of the Protocol signatories must ratify the treaty before it went into effect was diluted to 67% (Shabecoff, 1987a; 1987b; 1987c).
Ironically, in late September 1987, just after the Montreal Protocol was signed, new data were released that showed that the Antarctic Ozone Hole was larger than ever. And a March 1988study by the Ozone Trends Panel showed not only that man-made chlorine emissions were causing stratospheric ozone layer depletion, but also that the probable rate of loss of ozone was far greater than the models had previously predicted (Shabecoff, 1987d; 1987e; 1988a; 1988b; and Benedick, 110-111).