The Green Technocrat

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Earlier today a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that China will not accept a binding emissions reduction target when the UNFCCC holds its climate change conference in Copenhagen saying that this would stunt the country’s economic growth.

China is still a developing country and the present task confronting China is to develop its economy and alleviate poverty. Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in its emissions, so it is not possible for China to accept a binding, compulsory target.

This is a setback for the Obama administration which had said that they would push hard for China to accept such a resolution later this year in Copenhagen, where the world will decide on a new climate change protocol which will replace the existing Kyoto Protocol (which was not signed by the U.S.).

However after last weeks U.S.-China climate change talks in Beijing it became pretty apparent that China and the U.S. were at opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to agreeing on what they expected of each other.  China wants the U.S. to give up 1% of its GDP (about $140 billion) to help fund clean energy technology in the developing nations, and wants the U.S. to slash it’s emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.  In contrast, the current “Clean Energy and Security Act” floating around congress right now only obliges the U.S. to cut emissions by 17% during this time frame, and it is likely that before the bill passes these emissions reductions will be watered down even further.

And therein lies the problem.  The U.S. and China simply cannot have this sort of round and round relationship when it comes to reducing emissions. China, which is already the worlds largest producer of CO2, needs to accept the fact that even if the U.S. caused this mess (which we did), China needs to be a large part of the solution.  What’s more, the U.S. cannot use China’s reluctance to cut emissions as an excuse to keep our own emissions so high.  We should already be working on reducing our emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.  There is no reason not to.  It is scientifically feasible, would be economically beneficial to the country as a whole, and of paramount importance would set a huge example for the rest of the world to follow.

As Orville Schell from Yale 360 describes the problem:

Officials in Beijing have evolved considerably over the last few years in terms of recognizing the serious consequences of climate change in China, including the risks of increased drought in the North; flooding in the South; melting glaciers and thawing permafrost on the Tibetan Plateau; increased desertification; and aberrant weather patterns throughout China. But Chinese leaders still steadfastly hold that since the West is primarily responsible for the problem, it must bear most of the costs of remedy.

So let’s take the lead.  If China sees that the U.S. is actually taking such large steps to solve the problem they will be far more likely to follow suit.