China, the top greenhouse gas emitter, has urged rich nations to do more to lead the fight against climate change and help avert heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels.
In a submission to the United Nations before a meeting of governments in Germany that begins today, Beijing called on developed countries to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and increase aid to help the poor tackle global warming.
Reuters Newsagency reports rich nations should “take the lead”, China said in the document.
It highlighted its deep differences with the United States despite promises of greater cooperation between the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Beijing said developing nations were doing most to curb rising world greenhouse gas emissions to limit warming.
“Their contribution to global mitigation efforts is far greater than that by developed countries,” it said.
Jennifer Morgan, a climate expert at the World Resources Institute think-tank, said the Chinese submission showed that few nations were yet willing to compromise in talks meant to end with a global UN deal at a summit in Paris in late 2015.
“In negotiations in the past, countries haven’t shown flexibility until the end,” she said, referring to a 2009 summit in Copenhagen that failed to agree a global deal.
“One lesson is that you can’t leave everything until the last moment,” she said. Wild weather ranging from floods in Britain to record heat in Australia has helped push climate change higher up the political agenda of some world leaders.
Senior government negotiators will meet next week in Bonn to try to sketch out elements of a UN deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 pact that obliges only the developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The US and other developed nations say that emerging economies must also adopt clear carbon targets.
China said, however, the new deal should retain the distinction between rich and poor.
Reuters reports developing nations say they need to burn more fossil fuels to help end poverty and catch up with nations that have burned huge amounts since the Industrial Revolution.
Beijing also reiterated its past insistence that rich nations cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
That is far deeper than the European Union’s goal of at least 20 per cent and US target of four per cent.
Beijing said the rich should provide US$40 billion this year in aid to help developing nations tackle global warming and increase it by US$10 billion a year to US$100 billion by 2020.
Separately, the EU said all countries should set out far clearer promises to rein in emissions beyond 2020, when a new deal is meant to enter into force.
China’s current goal, for instance, is to reduce the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic output by 2020, a measure that allows emissions to rise with fast economic growth.
The European Union said such targets could not be understood unless they included projected rates of GDP.
2 Responses
So, China wants the rich countries to shoulder the burden to avert catastrophic global warming. Of course China wants to use the per-capita metric, but nature doesn’t do ‘per capitas’, unfortunately. It just counts molecules. China is a massive consumer of resources, both renewable and finite non-renewable, and a massive polluter, as is India. But just because they haven’t been able to control their breeding, and have massive populations (among quite a few developing countries), they fall back on the per-capita impact as their bale out. This effectively rewards reckless expansion, and doesn’t reward sustainable practices.
Hi Peter – I agree – its quite hypocritical of China to want us to pay for them – and they are considerably more ‘developed’ than Australia and many other countries bieng one of the biggest economies on the planet – What i dont agree with is population reduction – as its currently being carried out worldwide through contaminated food and water (GMO, Pesticides, fluoride, BPA amongst hundreds of other lovely chemicals, all intentionally put into the food and water).
But you may get your wish as it seems an even wider War looms mate…..