Climate deal gives Obama limited victory

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A climate deal negotiated by the United States and other major carbon polluters will allow President Barack Obama to claim a limited victory, but enough to breathe new life into efforts to pass legislation in Congress.

Following two difficult weeks of intensive negotiations among representatives of 193 nations, Obama arrived at the talks in the final hours and hammered out a deal in face-to-face meetings with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

The two men represent the world's leading emitters of carbon dioxide pollution from industrial smokestacks and automobile tailpipes -- the greenhouse gas that scientists fear could ruin the planet.

U.S. officials were quick to point out that this deal, which still requires hard negotiations on details over the next 12 months, fell short of what scientists think countries need to do to avoid potentially catastrophic flooding and drought from global warming.

But Obama ran for president in 2008 promising change and after eight years of the Bush administration's antagonism toward mandating carbon reductions, the new U.S. president can say he delivered on a major campaign promise to begin controlling global warming.

For his critics, Obama also can say that he wrung some concessions out of the big developing countries of China, India and South Africa. For the first time an international accord will capture their carbon cutting promises.

That could rob Republicans in Congress of an essential argument, that Congress should not be imposing limits on U.S. companies when big polluters like China were unrestrained and could thus steal U.S. jobs.

Democratic Senator John Kerry, who is trying to bring together enough Republicans and fence-sitting Democrats to pass a climate bill in the Senate, said the Obama-brokered "Copenhagen Accord" broke the back of international "bickering" and "sets the stage for a final deal and for Senate passage this spring of major legislation at home."

That might be. But several other important pieces must also fall into place, including:

-- Congress must promptly finish work on a healthcare reform bill that has dominated lawmakers' attention. If the healthcare fight stretches on too long, it will be too late into 2010 and too close to the November congressional elections for the Senate to act on the contentious climate bill.

-- Americans next year must believe an economic recovery is underway and creating jobs. If not, too many politicians will fear a political backlash by debating a climate bill that could lead to even marginally higher energy prices.

-- More Republicans must get involved. "There is no partisan option for passing this in the Senate," noted Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Some environmentalists hope that Obama will personally court his 2008 presidential opponent, Senator John McCain, who used to be a leader on climate change legislation but lately has done little but criticize.

As the various countries work out the details of this bare-bones pact before the next annual meeting in Mexico, all eyes will be on some of the most controversial aspects. Those include new monitoring and verification of countries' carbon reduction programs that Obama insisted upon to gauge whether China, India and others were live up to their promises.

Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, which enforces some of the toughest air quality standards in the U.S., told Reuters early this week that such provisions were essential.

"It's the first step in building an effective climate program...it establishes a common currency" for countries, she said.

But some environmentalists, who had placed great hopes in Obama, saw nothing but a cop-out in Copenhagen. "Climate negotiations...have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth U.S.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)