Designing a new global climate change treaty isn't as important as setting the practical groundwork for major new global emissions reductions before 2020, two climate policy experts said yesterday.

As diplomats prepare to meet in Doha, Qatar, next week for annual climate change negotiations, Center for American Progress senior fellow Andrew Light and Climate Advisers Network Berlin founder Hans Verolme said the Obama administration must ramp up U.S. actions to avert global warming.

But, they agreed, it likely won't happen in Doha.

"It is an ideal moment for the U.S. to step up," Light said, citing the summer droughts and wildfires and the pre-election Superstorm Sandy. But, he said, "Will they do it in Doha? I don't know. Doha is probably not the best place for the U.S. to step up and say something much different."

This 18th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. climate convention, otherwise known as COP 18, is expected to be more low-key than previous years.

On the agenda will be hammering out some beginning details of a new "legal instrument," which should be finalized by 2015 and take effect by 2020. Under it, all nations would be legally obligated to cut carbon.

That represents a major change from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which the United States never joined because it forced just a few industrialized nations to make cuts, while allowing China and India to act voluntarily.

But analysts cautioned against a return of the hype that surrounded the 2009 Copenhagen, Denmark, climate summit, where leaders failed to design a new treaty despite widespread hope and expectation.

Focusing on the here and now

"You change the politics not in one meeting in Copenhagen; you change the politics in Washington," Verolme said. "It's a lesson that many activists learned the hard way."

He argued that the United States needs to "retool and reschool" -- work hard to transition to a low-carbon economy but do so in a way that doesn't ignore or make light of the job losses that will undoubtedly happen.

"You cannot make a full economic transition to a low-carbon economy without shutting down some industries," Verolme said. Whereas Germany, he argued, shifted to clean energy by helping assisting coal workers with salaries and retraining them, that is not likely in the United States.

Light agreed that "reorganizing the economy" should be a top priority, combined with agreements outside the U.N. climate process that could lead to big emissions cuts -- like reducing highly potent greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, through the Montreal Protocol.

"The most important conversation right now isn't about treaty architecture," he said, noting that no matter what diplomats agree to, the burgeoning pact "will not take another ounce of GHGs out of the atmosphere before 2020."

Meanwhile, he noted, several studies have found at least a gap of at least 4 gigatons of greenhouse gases between the emissions cut pledges countries made and what is actually needed to avert catastrophic global warming. The new treaty, he said, won't close it -- but eliminating HFCs could sweep about 2 gigatons of greenhouse gas equivalent out of the atmosphere.

"That is the biggest thing we can do in one fell swoop," he said. But, he added, "It's not yet at the top of the diplomatic agenda."

Edward Cameron, director of the International Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute, said the United States at a minimum needs to come to Doha with "creative ideas" about new ways to balance the needs and fears of countries now obligated to curb emissions.

But, he said of the climate crisis, "We're not going to solve it in Doha. We're not going to solve it even with a sustained agreement in 2015."