China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has once again emerged as the biggest puzzle at international climate change talks, sending ambiguous signals about the role it intends to play in future negotiations. This week the nation’s top climate envoy said that China would be open to signing a formal treaty limiting emissions after 2020 — but laid down conditions for doing so that are unlikely ever to be met…
“These conditions are not new,” Mr. Xie acknowledged at a briefing at the conference center here where more than 190 nations are gathered for the 17th annual conference of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “These have been negotiated for past 20 years.
“What is most important so far is to implement existing commitments and review efforts undertaken by the parties, and after that we can think about what should be done after 2020 and beyond.”
Todd D. Stern, the American climate change envoy, said that the United States would be happy to discuss a formal treaty at some future date and then spelled out his conditions, which also were not new and appeared to rule out any sort of deal like that envisioned by Mr. Xie…
Perhaps our fixation on the necessity of a global treaty limiting carbon dioxide emissions is worse than quixotic. It could be a fixation on a charade, a distraction which alienates the slow and intimate growth of the solidarity necessary to change not only the technological systems emitting carbon dioxide, but the psychology and culture truly animating those systems.
The mood in which we feel that “if only those delegates at these interminable annual conferences could come up with a (technical, legal) solution, then things might turn out ok,” is captive to the same assumptions that fuel the ever-growing emissions. I suspect that no such solution is possible. I would further suggest that planning on a local level for that eventuality might need to become more culturally urgent. But for this to happen, people must more broadly accept that there is no possible technical “solution” to this problem at the global level. And, unfortunately, the environmental catastrophes that will result from this failure must manifest as well.
At Climate Talks, a Familiar Standoff Emerges Between the U.S. and China – NY Times