By Elizabeth Balkan •
March 25, 2009
China appears to be backing out of global efforts to address climate change, intensifying pre-Copenhagen debate.
A top China central government think tank yesterday released a framework for quantifying countries’ historical emissions. Under this proposed framework, the State Council Development Research Center (DRC) would create a “historic account” of past emissions, used to benchmark developing countries with lower accumulated emissions - like China - against countries with higher accumulated emissions and assign emissions “deficits” to countries who have emitted less. Using this quantitative assessment, countries with emissions “deficits” would get the green light to emit, or trade emissions credits with countries that have already exceeded their allowance.
The release of this plan supports external analysis that China believes it should have the right to develop free from carbon reductions until their accumulated emissions are on par with industrialized countries. A recent Brookings Institute report: “Overcoming Obstacles to US-China Cooperation on Climate Change” articulated Beijing’s stance, which included the conviction that:
Countries should be held responsible not only for their current emissions but also for their cumulative historical emissions, given that greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere over many decades.
This plan is Beijing’s most comprehensive effort to date to both highlight and quantify development inequalities as a justification for releasing China and other developing countries from emissions reduction expectations.
By mcmilker •
December 1, 2008
The UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland, starting today is raising hopes and fears across the green spectrum. As reported in the Christian Science Monitor.
A year-long push to devise a new global climate-change treaty – one that picks up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off – gets under way Monday in Poland, with delegates from more than 190 nations set to resume grappling with the thorny issues of how much more to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and who will pay.
The talks, in their first round, are focused on reducing human influence on climate from occurring, according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). More or less, this means keeping global warming to about 2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels by the end of the century. Expectations however are low for this meeting.
President-Elect Obama’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gases to pre 1990 levels in the next 12 years notwithstanding, this group has a lot of challenges ahead. This first round of talks is primarily to develop working groups to tackle the various issues surrounding climate change in both developed and developing countries. But, with the global economic crisis on everyone’s mind, it will be hard to keep the conversation on track and work toward lower carbon emissions.
And while they are working to devise ways to reduce carbon emissions, they’ll create quite a few. AFP reports:
By Mark Seall •
April 7, 2008
Following the tears and last minute dramas of last year’s Bali climate talks I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to write of intriguing political entanglements following last week’s United Nations Climate Change negotiations in Bangkok.
As expected, there were no major advances made, but unexpectedly there were few disagreements either. The wheels of diplomacy continue to grind slowly towards a solution which may or may not deliver some actual benefits. There are some who suspect that negotiators are biding their time until new US administration gets to work later this year. Then there is the other theory that the world has just gotten tired of seemingly never ending negotiations in tropical locations.
