China and United States refuse to budge on climate emissions

The world’s two biggest carbon emitters, China and the United States, Tuesday warned they would not shift on the offers for tackling their pollution, a question lying at the heart of the UN climate talks here. Yu Qingtai, China’s climate ambassador, batted away calls for Beijing to up its pledge.

China’s plan, which entails braking its expected use of energy in relation to economic growth, is not on the table, he told reporters at the climate talks in Copenhagen. “We announced those targets, we don’t intend to put them up for discussion,” Yu said.

Separately, the United States poured cold water on the notion that it would deepen its offer of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, as outlined by President Barack Obama in the run-up to the conference.

“I am not anticipating any change in the mitigation commitment,” US chief delegate Todd Stern told a press conference.

“Our commitment is tied to our anticipated legislation and there are elements in that legislation that could result in an overall target or an overall reduction amount that could actually be a fair amount higher. “But we’re not making a commitment to that right now because it’s just uncertain and we don’t want to promise something that we don’t have.”

The roles of China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 and 2 emitters, are pivotal to the negotiations unfolding in Copenhagen on crafting a new global pact on climate change beyond 2012. China has made a voluntary promise to reduce carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 40-45 percent by 2020. This amounts to a major drive on energy efficiency and a switch to cleaner sources.

“We need China involved to conclude an ambitious agreement,” said Danish Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen, adding that he had spoken to his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao the day before and Wen would probably arrive Wednesday. Rasmussen said he was “encouraged” that China had national targets for reducing the carbon intensity of its economy.

“What we need to solve in the coming few days — and this is just one outstanding question — is how we can translate these national decisions into some kind of international language,” he said. Critics say, though, it still does not put a cap on the overall volume of Chinese emissions, which would still grow if its economy continues to expand at the present rate.

Obama has offered to cut US carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 over a 2005 benchmark, a figure that aligns with legislation put before the US Congress. It amounts to a reduction of around four percent compared with the more widely used reference year of 1990. The US offer has been widely criticised as inadequate, especially by the European Union.

It says it will not sign up to a deal by which the world’s big two carbon emitters are essentially unconstrained. The United States remains outside the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, and China does not have legally binding emissions targets under that treaty, which only apply to industrialised countries, not developing ones.

“There are two countries in the world representing half the emissions of the world, and that’s the United States and China,” said Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, representing the 27-nation EU.

“We still expect them both to raise their ambition level for emission reductions, otherwise we won’t be able to reach the two degree target,” referring to the goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit degrees).

Many scientists say rich countries overall should cut their emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent over the 30 years between 1990 and 2020 in order to keep warming to safer levels. Big developing countries, for their part, should also sharply reduce forecast growth in emissions by 2020.

This entry was posted on December 15, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under .Environmental News, News, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.