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  • UN Carbon Emissions Summit

    This is one of the summits in NYC to make use of the occassion when world leaders are converging to attend the large UN General Assembly. It is held in preparation of a summit conference at the end of the year in Copenhagen.

    China and U.S. try to jumpstart U.N. climate talks
    23 Sept UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - China laid out a plan to curb carbon emissions by 2020 and U.S. President Barack Obama called on all nations to act now to tackle global warming, as world leaders tried to inject momentum into climate change talks.

    With less than three months until a United Nation conference aimed at sealing the world's toughest pact to fight climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Tuesday's leaders' summit to give negotiations an extra shrove.

    "While the summit is not the guarantee that we will get the global agreement, we are certainly one step closer to that global goal today," Ban said at the close of the meeting.

    The one-day summit drew nearly 100 heads of state and government before official talks among 190 nations in Copenhagen in December to forge a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase runs out at the end of 2012.

    Analysts and green groups gave cautious praise to China and Japan but said Obama's speech was long on rhetoric but short on specific pledges of U.S. action.

    In his address, Chinese President Hu Jintao said China's new plan included vigorously developing renewable and nuclear energy and promised emissions would grow slower than economic growth in the future.

    "We will endeavor to cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 level," Hu said.

    The pledge, which marked the first time China has said it will accept measurable curbs on its emissions, was seen as an attempt to counter critics, especially in Washington, who say Beijing is doing too little to fight climate change.

    Hu did not include specific figures, however. A Chinese official said those would be ready soon. But the step comes in addition to China's current aim to cut energy consumption per unit of GDP by about 20 percent by 2010 compared with 2005 levels. ...
    Last edited by Merlin; 23 Sep 09,, 10:59.

  • #2
    Some analysts are happy with China's shift, but no figure is committed.

    China's historic shift on climate change
    3 hrs ago [ABC] Analysts say China's emissions reduction announcement has huge implications for international consensus on dealing with global warming.

    China's commitment to reducing its emissions may be lacking in detail, but those monitoring the climate change debate mark it as a historic shift.

    British economist and climate change author Sir Nicholas Stern says Chinese President Hu Jintao has broken the deadlock between developed and developing countries.

    Meanwhile, commentators in China say it is one of the most historically significant announcements that Mr Jintao has ever made.

    Yang Ailun, a specialist on climate change with Greenpeace China, told the BBC while there are few details available, it is the gesture that counts.

    "It's the first time the Chinese Government publicly said China will have a carbon intensity target up to 2020," he said.

    "So it's a mid-term carbon intensity target and this is the sort of target that clearly shows that China wants to move away from [their] 'business as usual' development past."

    'Net increase'
    China may be one of the biggest polluters in the world, but in the past it has refused to commit to a pollution-cutting strategy.

    It blamed developed countries for causing global warming because of centuries of fossil fuel use.

    Now China says it will take steps to boost nuclear power and reduce the growth rate of its carbon pollution as measured against economic growth. ....

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    • #3
      China actually ranks 96th worst carbon emitter if taken per capita.

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      • #4
        Nice words, but little of substance at this UN summit.

        Climate change and the UN: Nice Words
        Leaders offer little of substance at the latest climate change gathering in New York

        23 Sept [Economist] JUST over 70 days to go and there is miserably little progress yet. The outlook for the global summit on climate change to be held in Copenhagen in December is uncertain.

        The current version of the draft outcome document for the meeting is hundreds of pages long, with thousands of passages in brackets representing points of disagreement. Climate-watchers are steadily lowering their expectations. They had hoped that activities this week in New York, scheduled around the UN General Assembly, might move things forward. So far there is little to cheer.

        A speech by Barack Obama on Tuesday September 22nd was eagerly awaited. He acknowledged that America—which failed to ratify the Kyoto protocol, encouraging industrialised countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases—has some catching up to do. He made clear the dangers of rapid climate change, urging the world to act “boldly, swiftly and together” to avert an “irreversible catastrophe”.

        But he offered little that was practical or specific, beyond noting that America would start measuring its greenhouse-gas emissions more exactly, to better assess what progress is being made. He struck an urgent tone but there was little punch to the speech. A spokesman for Oxfam, an aid agency, responded ruefully that someone had “switched the coffee to decaf at today’s UN climate summit”.

        To some extent Mr Obama was upstaged by China’s president, Hu Jintao, who at least offered some specific details of steps that his country is taking. He described how, in China’s five-year economic plan from 2006-2010, the country has set itself targets of energy intensity—the energy required to produce a unit of GDP. Mr Hu says that China will go further in the coming years, by trying to cut the carbon emissions per dollar of GDP produced, for example by developing renewable and nuclear energy.

        “We will endeavour to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15% by 2020”, he said. He also touted plans to extend an existing reforestation programme: 18%, or 175m hectares, of Chinese land is forested today; the government wants to see another 40m hectares added by 2020. China is now the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, and its emissions are rising rapidly as its economy grows. Mr Hu wants to show the world that he is taking concerns about the climate seriously.

        However the Chinese president did not offer hard targets on the main issue, carbon intensity, only promising a reduction by a “notable amount”. As long as China continues to add coal-fired power at an alarming rate, Mr Hu’s promises will not satisfy those who worry that global carbon emissions are growing too quickly. Nor is his speech likely to be enough to convince sceptics in America’s Congress who want China to commit to hard targets before—or at least at the same time as—America does.

        The cap-and-trade bill in Congress offers a target that many Europeans consider to be weak—a 17% reduction in emissions on 2005 levels by 2020. But even that is imperilled by almost total Republican opposition, and the nervousness of moderate Democrats in vulnerable electoral districts.

        Whatever Mr Obama’s personal commitment to doing something about climate change, he has a limited ability to enforce new policies. He has the power to do some things by executive decision, and has done so with efficiency standards on light bulbs and cars. And a 2007 court decision has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can directly regulate greenhouse-gas emissions which are considered an “endangerment”, a power that Mr Obama has threatened to use. But all sides in America agree that legislation would be more comprehensive than an executive order. ....

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