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In this official transcript of a briefing delivered on Air Force One on the way back from Copenhagen, Denmark to Washington, D.C., a senior administration official (evidently Press Secretary Robert Gibbs) describes the unusual process President Obama took to craft the Copenhagen Accord with the leaders of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.

11:46 P.M. CET

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So I just want to make sure everybody is cool with the rules here. We’re going to have probably a couple of these on this flight. What I want to do though, on background as a senior administration official, I want to go through a series of events that led up to the President going into what we had set up as a bilateral meeting with Premier Wen. So I just want to get—I want everyone to be clear on this set of events. So let me go through this timeline and then we can go through questions. And bear with me because I sometimes can’t even read my own writing.

At the first bilateral meeting with Premier Wen, the President, as we have done over the past several days, was pushing quite hard on transparency language. And we had given some transparency language to them and negotiators on our side had gone to work with their side on the notion of transparency.

Q The language was before the meeting, though? Was given to them before the meeting?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’m sorry, say again.

Q When you said, “we had given language to them,” you meant before their bilat?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This was during the bilat. So this was at the end of the bilat and the President says to Wen that he thinks our negotiators should get together, spend about an hour seeing if we can make some progress – because in all honesty, rhetorically, we were hearing what we wanted to hear about steps that they were willing to take on transparency, but wanted to make sure that we would have something to agree on that wasn’t just them agreeing to agree.

So the President at that point – you guys will have some times in your email to go through – but remember there comes a point in which you should have gotten from Kevin Lewis, via an update from me, that says the President has gone to the multilateral meeting and representing the Chinese was their climate change ambassador in the ministry of foreign affairs, who was in this meeting – to put it, I guess, accurately – as to speak for the entire Chinese government.

It’s at this point that the President, before our Medvedev bilateral, the President said to staff, I don’t want to mess around with this anymore, I want to just talk with Premier Wen. So we were trying to do that before the Medvedev bilat. Our advance team called their advance team to try to set this meeting up, and in all honesty make one more chance, make one more run at getting something done. The Chinese say they need to call our advance guys back. So it’s clear that it’s going to take some time to get this Wen meeting done, so we’re going to go ahead and do the Medvedev bilat earlier than was on the schedule.

And as the President waited for Medvedev to be – to move the delegation down into the room, the President also says to staff, we should meet in a group of three with Lula of Brazil, Singh of India, and Zuma of South Africa. All right. So, let’s get a meeting with Wen, let’s get a meeting with these three guys.

We get a call back from advance that Wen is at the hotel and the Chinese staff are at the airport.

Q (Inaudible.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t know what level of staff, but some of their staff – a decent chunk of their staff was at the airport.

Q So they had all left the Bella Center?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.

Q Including Wen – and that was news to you guys -

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Wen was at the hotel.

Q Oh, he was at the hotel.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The Indians – when we called also about Zuma, Lula and Singh, we were told Singh was at the airport.

The Climate Action Network has issued the following letter to protest the removal of Friends of the Earth International, the largest grassroots environmental organization in the world, and Avaaz, the largest online activist organization in the world. Download the letter.

On behalf of Climate Action Network International, and our 500 member organizations, I would like to register our strong concern about the limited NGO access to the second week of the Copenhagen climate negotiations. In particular the removal of badges from Avaaz and Friends of the Earth International.

The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development affirms that “non-governmental organisations play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of participatory democracy.” Civil society has played a constructive and vital role in the climate negotiations since their inception. Civil society brings insight, oversight and connection to people around the world who depend on the work of NGOs to pursue the credibility of the process and integrity of the outcome.

Excluding civil society is not only inconsistent with UN Principles. It is profoundly counterproductive to the spirit of the conference and the practical value of its outcome. To launch the world toward a sustainable future, the process over the critical next few days must be accountable and transparent so that the result will have the power of broad ownership by all sectors. Nothing less than the full and active participation of civil society can produce such an outcome.

On Saturday more than one million people at four thousand events in one hundred and forty countries called for world leaders to agree a fair, ambitious and binding agreement at Copenhagen. One hundred thousand marched on the streets of Copenhagen. Environment and development groups provide a conduit for the world’s people to engage in the climate negotiations. And many of the world’s people will look to civil society to judge the outcome of Copenhagen. It is essential that civil society is allowed to participate in these negotiations.

I urge you to reinstate participants from Avaaz and Friends of the Earth International, and to ensure the plenary sessions are open to NGO attendance.

I am happy to work with you and your teams to ensure the full and fruitful participation of civil society in these historic talks.

Yours sincerely, David Turnbull Director Climate Action Network International

Download the letter.

Senators respond to China’s recent emissions reduction announcement of lowering greenhouse gas intensity by 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Several senators continue to move away from the legislative structure passed by the House of Representatives, and supported by President Obama and most industry advocates of reform.

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

E&E News Bill Wicker, a Bingaman spokesman, said the chairman supports the economywide cap-and-trade approach for reducing emissions but also sees some merits in the other ideas. Additionally, several panel members on both sides of the aisle have signaled interest in legislative options beyond the cap-and-trade bill approved earlier this spring in the House and now up for debate in the Senate. “We thought it’d be a good idea to step back and put all of the different policy options into a single hearing,” Wicker said.

Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

E&E News By the time we’re done with financial regulatory reform, everybody’s head is going to be spinning and they’re going to be saying, “Oh my gosh, how can you prevent this from happening again?”

People are moving more toward something that’s much more streamlined. The bottom line is you don’t want to have added volatility to the market when trying to solve [the emissions] problem. And that’s clearly what the futures trading does. It adds volatility. What you want is a predictable price so that people can move forward and diversify.

Robert Casey (D-PA)

E&E News There’s a lot of verification we’re going to have to see before I’d embrace it [China’s announced GHG commitments] and say it’s as positive a development as the Chinese would hope we’d say it is. I’m a little skeptical is maybe the fastest way to say it.

So if we’ve got problems here in terms of working that out and making sure there are enough emission allowances for us to do what we need to do here, you can imagine how much more complicated it gets internationally.

Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

E&E News Some will make the case that if you do financial reform that setting up a Wall Street trading system on carbon securities is less dangerous. I am not interested in setting up a trillion-dollar carbon securities market to tell us what the price of energy is going to be.

E&E News It’s pretty clear to me that our nation is going to continue to use our most abundant resource, which is coal, but we’re going to use it differently. And the question is how do we do that. How do we find the science, technology and research capability to allow us to continue to use coal in a manner that would decarbonize it or use it in a much lower manner? This [CCS funding report] was a unique exercise and a unique product of thought, where several stakeholders have come together on a single issue. . . [It will provide] beneficial pathways for future legislation.

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

E&E News The idea would be while the body is working on financial regulation, then during that same time we’ll be getting the energy, the bipartisan group working on energy.

Richard G. Lugar

E&E News I’d not be comfortable if the Copenhagen progress report relied on billions of dollars [in international assistance] anticipated from the U.S. budget that we’ve not debated and will be very contentious.

Lisa Murkowski (D-AK)

E&E News Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), offered Bingaman praise for keeping an open mind to alternatives. “Everyone assumes cap and trade is the only way to go,” Dillon said. “There’s been a demonization or marginalization of anyone raising other options.” As for Murkowski, a onetime supporter of cap-and-trade legislation, Dillon said, “She’s not promoting one idea over another yet. She’s exploring the options.”

Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)

E&E News The Chinese are a mystery that way. They enter negotiations always with an advantage because nobody knows what they’re going to do, what they’re going to say, or whether they mean it.

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

E&E News Unfortunately, we start from a position where there’s fairly considerable basis for skepticism on the enforcement side [for China emissions reductions], which means the administration has got to come up with a pretty solid program. It doesn’t matter what their numbers are if they don’t have to prove them.

Politico If we don’t provide those other technologies a level playing field, we provide an unfair advantage to the nuclear power industry at the expense of the American economy at large.

On Wednesday, December 9th, President Barack Obama will participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15).

For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the conference. U.S. delegates will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy. Topics will range from energy efficiency investments and global commitments to renewables policy and clean energy jobs. The following keynote events and speakers are currently scheduled:

• Wednesday, December 9th: Taking Action at Home, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
• Thursday, December 10th: New Energy Future: the role of public lands in clean energy production and carbon capture, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar
• Friday, December 11th: Clean Energy Jobs in a Global Marketplace, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
• Monday, December 14th: Leading in Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Secretary Steven Chu
• Tuesday, December 15th: Clean Energy Investments: creating opportunities for rural economies, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
• Thursday, December 17th: Backing Up International Agreement with Domestic Action, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley and Assistant to the President Carol Browner

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose envoy Todd Stern is in charge of U.S. climate negotiations, was not part of the announcements.

Numerous Democrats are voicing opposition to acting on climate change.

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

The Hill “We’ve got all kinds of difference of perspective of where the Senate is and where the votes are and where the Senate should try to move,” Bingaman said of his meeting with the other chairmen. Bingaman, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he would be willing to pass energy legislation separately from a cap-and-trade bill to address climate change.

E&E News It’s pretty clear that there seems to be a developing consensus that we want a more flexible opportunity for all countries to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions. The idea that the only test of a country’s ability to achieve greenhouse gas reductions is whether they adopt a formal cap is just not necessarily the appropriate measure.

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

The Hill “I’d love to get it done tomorrow,” said Boxer, who acknowledged others are less intent on moving that quickly.

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)

The Hill “I’m not in a hurry to do that,” she said of climate change legislation. “I think the energy bill we did in the Senate Energy Committee gets us a long way toward job creation and moving us from an old-energy economy to a new-energy economy, which is really what the objective is — lowering carbon output and lessening dependence on foreign oil.”

Claire McCaskill (R-MO)

Wall Street Journal It’s really big, really, really hard, and is going to make a lot of people mad. Climate fits that category.

Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Politico There are folks who would say, ‘Well, let’s just shut down coal-powered plants.’ That is not going to happen. You are not going to have 60 votes in the Senate to shut down coal.

John McCain (R-AZ)

Wall Street Journal The delay was “just a matter of reality, they can’t get anything done at this time,” said Sen. John McCain, who has previously supported climate legislation. He has said he wouldn’t support the current Senate proposal because of disagreements over its handling of nuclear energy.

Lisa Murkowski (D-AK)

E&E News You know what, we’d get blamed at Copenhagen if we acted or if we didn’t act. It is what it is.

We’re obviously not going to be doing that [passing a climate bill] prior to Copenhagen. Do we walk into Copenhagen with this label that the U.S. has failed?

As international leaders let the timetable for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol slip to 2010, Republicans call for “starting from scratch” as Democrats and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) hope that spring will be a final deadline for passage of climate legislation.

Ben Cardin (D-MD)

E&E News Conventional wisdom is that you have until the spring to get controversial issues moving. If not, it’s difficult to see getting through closer to the elections.

Kent Conrad (D-ND)

E&E News I’m encouraged by it. Senator Kerry has certainly been good at reaching out. He’s been very serious about reaching out. We’ve been sharing things with him. We have more to share. He’s very good at listening, which is the best way of succeeding around here.

Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

Politico Good policy is going to be left behind by the insistence that the climate change bill has to be done first or together.

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

E&E News We don’t want it to slip into the summer.

Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

E&E News But I do appreciate what Lindsey Graham is trying to do in the sense of nuclear and more offshore drilling.

Several senators say they would prefer to have a better idea what major developing countries plan to do under the auspices of the U.N. talks before they sign off on any domestic emission restrictions. “That’d make a big difference. If we passed a bill that the rest of the world didn’t follow, then Uncle Sam could soon become Uncle Sucker and export all of our jobs to China.”

Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

Wall Street Journal It’s common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year.

Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)

AgricultureOnline Quite frankly, I don’t know that we’re going to do anything on it until next year because we have the health bill.

John Kerry (D-Mass.)

Politico As soon as it is practical with respect to the health care debate and financial regulator reform this legislation will come to the floor of the Senate and the United States Senate will do its part.

Wall Street Journal I don’t want to create artificial deadlines which get in the way of our being methodical about this. The main thing to do here is to build the adequate base of support and consensus.

Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)

Politico I feel the meetings that Sen. Kerry and Graham and I have had so far that we are making some progress here and we can move it along.

Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)

Wall Street Journal I don’t see any climate bill on the table right now that I can support. We really have to start from scratch again.

Max Baucus (D-MT)

Washington Independent I am committed to passing meaningful, balanced climate-change legislation. I am committed to legislation that will protect our land and those whose livelihood depends on it. I want our children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy the outdoors the way that we can today. So I’m going to work to pass climate-change legislation that is both meaningful and that can muster enough votes to become law. […] Let me be clear. We should work to minimize any job losses. But we should recognize that in the case of acid rain [in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments], the negative [economic] consequences were far less than projected. We should keep this in mind when similar claims are made about the effects of legislation to address climate change.

Reuters We can not allow our manufacturing industries to fade as result of trade with countries that refuse to negotiate global solutions to global concerns. We must push our trading partners to do their part to curb harmful emissions and we must devise a border measure, consistent with our international obligations, to prevent the carbon leakage that would occur if US manufacturing shifts to countries without effective climate change programs.

John Kerry (D-MA)

DTN Well, EPA is poised to move. Everybody needs to understand that. I’m going to make this as clear as I can: I don’t think anybody is going to wind up [blocking] EPA, because there’s filibuster-proof capacity to prevent that from happening. I’ll personally stand on the Senate floor, day and night, to prevent that from happening. Therefore, success in this is not defined by stopping a Senate bill. The reason is, EPA will then regulate without assistance to coal, without allocation of allowances that help companies to make the transition. And then you’re out there on your own. So the game in town, folks, is here. It’s in the Congress, where we have the ability to mitigate the transitional costs and to be reasonable in the process. That’s something people really need to focus on.

Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

E&E News Right now, plenty of other nations, including China, are ahead of us in manufacturing solar power technology, which better positions them for economic strength in the 21st Century. We have always been a world leader in innovation, and it’s time that we grab this economic opportunity.

Senators lay out their agenda after the Environment and Public Works Committee reported out the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

Max Baucus (D-MT)

E&E News That frees up the Senate, frankly. It frees up all members of the Senate who are interested in climate change, including those on the committee.

I don’t want to say we’re going to do something totally different. I’m respectful of the House allocation.

We have to be sensitive to our own industries, as other countries are sensitive to theirs. I strongly believe that an open trading system benefits all countries. It’d be unwise to retrench.

On his idea for triggers for stronger targets That’s something we can work out. Climate change is going to be with us, legislative efforts are going to be with us for a while. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. Plenty of time to work on this.

Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)

Wall Street Journal The actions the EPA has taken and its plans to regulate greenhouse gases are a serious concern. However, EPA’s actions should not scare Congress into passing bad legislation.

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Politico Now, it’s time to find a bill that will make good policy. Clearly, there are not 60 votes for that product.

E&E News I appreciate the committee’s work. Now it’s time to find a bill that can make good policy. Environmental policy needs to be good business policy. If it’s not, there will never be 60 votes.

Judd Gregg (R-NH)

Politico It’s hard to vote on a bill that big without knowing what it’s going to do. I don’t think that bill is viable in its present form, because we don’t know what it does.

Tom Harkin (D-IA)

E&E News on the 50-50 split of allocations to utilities based on retail sales and historic emissions It’s going to be changed. It can’t stay at 50-50. It won’t. It can’t.

Senators respond to the Environment and Public Works Committee reporting out the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) despite a Republican boycott.

Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

E&E News There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation. I don’t know if it’s going to be this year—probably next year.

Susan Collins (R-Maine)

E&E News Collins also criticized the EPW Committee process yesterday. “It’s certainly going to make it much more difficult for people like me, who believe we need to have some sort of climate change legislation, to take seriously what the committee produced.”

Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)

E&E News I want to see agriculture treated more fairly.

Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)

E&E News I have almost no interest in supporting something where we create a trillion-dollar carbon security market and have the investment bankers and speculators trade on Monday and Tuesday so we can find out what our energy is going to cost on Thursday and Friday.

Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)

E&E News “I found it surprising that the committee would vote it out without knowing what it does, which they don’t know because EPA hasn’t told us, hasn’t had time to score it.” Gregg said he is not a solid “no” vote despite the EPW Committee tumult. “I presume that a lot is going to happen before it’s completed,” he said.

Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.)

E&E News Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), for example, said that he met with coal producer Arch Coal yesterday morning, and that the company wants the bill to go away. “And I understand that, but I mean, if it goes away, then natural gas will rule the world. And I’m not quite ready for that.”