Obama, Trudeau Look to Forge 'Special Relationship' on Climate

Four months can make a world of difference.

Energy and climate change will be big-ticket items when President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, sworn-in in November, meet at the White House on Thursday.

The leaders will announce a new commitment to reducing potent methane emissions by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, following through on a pledge Obama made in January 2015, senior White House officials said.

Arctic issues, power sector infrastructure, and new limits on emissions from airplanes and heavy-duty vehicles will also be on the table.

"There is a developing special relationship between this president and the prime minister. Both young leaders with similar visions," Mark Feierstein, the National Security Council's Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs said in a call with reporters Tuesday. 

Trudeau is 44, three years younger than when Obama, 54, was inaugurated in 2009.

Trudeau's visit – which includes the first state dinner for a Canadian prime minister since 1997 –  promises to reset relations the two traditionally close-knit nations, which became strained over differences in energy and climate policy, especially the $5.4 billion Keystone XL pipeline.

For eight years, Trudeau's predecessor, conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, lobbied the Obama administration to sign off on Keystone XL's 1,200-mile northern extension. The U.S. is by far Canada's biggest customer for crude oil, and Canada is America's largest supplier. But by connecting the tar sands in Alberta with refineries and ports on America's Gulf Coast, the pipeline would have provided a crucial bridge to lucrative markets overseas, especially as oil prices began to plummet in June 2014.

Obama, however, held off on deciding on the project, first for months and then for years, and the nations' relationship soured. Meanwhile the pipeline grew into an international symbol of not merely the divide between oil companies and environmentalists but how two of the world's most powerful leaders viewed their responsibilities to respond to climate change: Harper was openly skeptical of climate science; Obama declared there was "no greater threat." 

The president ultimately rejected the project in November, citing concerns about global warming. A month later Harper lost his bid for re-election amid a groundswell of liberal opposition, leaving behind a projected budget deficit reaching into the tens of billions of dollars in the coming years.

Trudeau, after taking office, pledged to diversify Canada's economy.

"My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources," he said in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness."

The prime minister has promised to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 – a plan first introduced under Harper but with little policy to back it at the time. It mirrors the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which calls for similar cuts in power-sector emissions.

Both Obama and Trudeau have signed on to the U.N. climate change agreement achieved in Paris in December. 

"The climate relationship with Canada really just ramped up dramatically quickly," Todd Stern, White House special envoy for climate change, said during Tuesday's call. Trudeau's government, he added, has "already shown that they’re an ambitious and committed partner in the fight against climate change."