China shook up sleepy climate talks in Durban on Monday by saying it could accept binding emissions reductions after 2020—as long as the U.S. and other developed-world emitters do most of the work in the meantime.
“We accept a legally binding arrangement,” from 2020 onward, Xie Zhenhua, one of China’s top climate negotiators told a room packed with reporters who had turned out to see whether the Chinese were really throwing down the gauntlet at what was expected to be a largely directionless two weeks of annual United Nations-led climate talks. “It’s time to for us to see who is acting in a responsible way.”
Before 2020, Mr. Xie said, those responsibilities included extending the so-called Kyoto Protocol, a developed-world pact to cut emissions, and paying into a $100 billion annual fund to mitigate the effects of climate change that at the moment exists only in theory.
U.S. and European negotiators said they’d need to meet with Mr. Xie in private to find out what exactly he meant. “I don’t know what he’s saying yet,” said Todd Stern, chief negotiator for the U.S. in Durban. The U.S. went into climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 willing to sign up to a binding deal, but backed off when China said it wouldn’t join in. Now Washington favors individual commitments to cut emissions rather than an omnibus legal agreement.
For the U.S. to agree to a binding deal, China would have to join the U.S. as a developed nation subject to the most stringent cuts, and other loopholes would have to be eliminated. “No trap doors, no swiss cheese,” Mr. Stern said.
None of this is likely to get sorted out in Durban between now and Friday, when negotiators will conclude this round of the nearly 20-year-old talks. But China’s apparent challenge to work toward binding emissions cuts could set the stage for delegates to set a more ambitious timetable for future talk than anyone foresaw when the Durban conference opened last week.
All those who are serious about stopping this racist and suicidal policy to dooming the African and island nations to drought and flood, famine and death, from global warming, please read this:
http://www.bamn.com/2011/12/08/build-youth-scientist-leadership-environmental-movement/
We can build a real international movement of the oppressed to stop this!
Look up the video clip “Climategate ‘hide the decline’ explained by Berkeley professor Richard A. Muller “.
2:00 onwards for the goods, unless you want to hear the details about how the current crop of ‘top’ climate scientists faked their data.
Does anybody still believe in mankind loading the atmosphere with CO2, mysteriously paralizing ocean chemistry (which in reality controls the gaseous composition of the atmosphere)? And anybody out there who believes that a littlebit more CO2 in the gas around us would cause “catastrophic global warming”? Honest question: has anybody ever read the name Heinz Thieme? Gerhard Gerlich? Or Ralf D. Tscheuschner?
In fact it was this group of German scientists who has long ago disproved the CO2 warming dogma, not unexpectedly totally ignored by German politics. CO2 warming simply does not exist. We have compiled the findings in an easy-to-read report last year. http://www.ke-research.de/downloads/ClimateSaviors.pdf.
oh big surprise, KYOTO is dead and this drivel is NOT going forward. THANK YOUR gods for that
The Chinese want us to have a ham-strung economy (because of business stifling rules to cut emissions) so that they can catch up economically.
Then in 2020, they will say “just kidding” about their promise to cut back on their own emissions.
You can’t trust the Chinese on this.
Even if we could trust them, we shouldn’t cut back on emissions anyway. Global Warming is a hoax!!
http://www.powerlineblog.com/?s=climategate&x=25&y=11