The Platts Lecture: things have come a long way

At least, that's one of the points made by Gene Sperling, who was the Clinton administration's National Economic Advisor and director of the National Economic Council. The other lecture was delivered by James E. Rogers, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy.

Sperling was serving in the White House when the US signed the Kyoto treaty 10 years ago, almost to the day, but just a few months after a 95-0 vote in the US Senate sent a strong signal to the Clinton administration not to bother sending it down Pennsylvania Avenue for a vote. The president never did submit it.

Sperling's lecture posed the punning question: what is the climate for climate change in 2007, 10 years later? Far, far different, in his view. He ticked off poll results; he noted that the Democratic majority in the Senate, combined with some Republicans sympathetic to government efforts to reduce carbon emissions, could provide the 60-vote margin necessary to block a filibuster in the Senate. Al Gore, derided in 1992 by George H.W. Bush as "ozone man," had been talked about as a draft Presidential candidate and has a Nobel prize. The 95-0 treaty was co-sponsored by a Democrat (Robert Byrd), and obviously received plenty of Democratic support. Now, Sperling said, it's "unthinkable" that a Democrat running for president wouldn't have a strong position on climate change.

But for Sperling, he said the most stunning change for him has been the growing support of corporate CEOs for carbon reduction efforts, in particular, a cap-and-trade system. Whether it was his co-lecturer Rogers, or GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, or a host of others, Sperling said if he was still in the White House, he would have tried to "capture that momentum" spurred by the CEO support and transform it into real action.

But Sperling didn't talk about a Democratic successor to George W. Bush submitting a Kyoto-type agreement for a vote. His talk, and that of Rogers, focused more on implementing a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions. Both support a CO2 cap-and-trade system; the difference is in the details, and while they are thorny details, the fact that the debate is over the specifics supports Sperling's view about how much the ground has shifted.

Rogers strongly opposes an auction system, where companies would bid for CO2 emission rights. His preference, though not spelled out specifically, seemed to be more toward government granting CO2 emission rights for free and then having them priced in the open market, where companies with excess credits, due to their reduced emissions, could sell them to those companies that exceed targets. Sperling favors a transparent auction; much of Rogers' opposition toward an auction was directed at his view that the proceeds of the auction would be used to fund government activities that might have little to do with increasing energy efficiency.

That's not an insignificant debate. But the gap does seem surmountable.