Lisa Jackson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told delegates at the Copenhagen conference that the Obama administration will use its executive authority and will also push for climate legislation in an effort to place the nation on a path to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Jackson said her announcement that the EPA would begin regulating greenhouse gases as a threat to human health was not meant to supplant climate legislation now before Congress but to work in tandem with it. “This is not an either/or moment,” said Jackson. “This is a both/and moment.” Jackson is one of a handful of high-level U.S. officials and cabinet secretaries in Copenhagen taking part in climate negotiations. Another official, Todd Stern — President Obama’s special envoy for climate change — said that although the U.S. will contribute to a fund to help poor nations deal with climate change, the fund should not be viewed as a payment for the U.S. being the largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases. “We absolutely recognize our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere, but the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations, I just categorically reject that,” Stern told reporters.
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