On global warming, life will not be fair
Reuters reports the latest trends in CO2 emissons: China will overtake the United States as the world?s biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday. The estimate is much firmer than the IEA?s previous forecast, last November, that on current trends China would overtake ...
Reuters reports the latest trends in CO2 emissons: China will overtake the United States as the world?s biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday. The estimate is much firmer than the IEA?s previous forecast, last November, that on current trends China would overtake the United States before 2010. ?Either this year or next year,? IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol told Reuters, in answer to the question of when China would overtake the United States.... China is set to become the world?s top carbon emitter just as serious talks start to extend the U.N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012, potentially heaping pressure on Beijing to take more action on climate change. A copy of a so-far unpublished Chinese government global warming report, seen by Reuters, rejects binding caps on carbon emissions until the country?s modernisation, by the middle of this century, opting instead to brake emissions growth. The United States, which pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, would not join a new climate change regime unless it also applied to China and India, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union said on Wednesday. ?There will be no comprehensive global warming legislation coming out of the United States... that does not include limits or a programme for China, India and the rest of the developing world,? Ambassador C. Boyden Gray told Reuters in an interview ahead of an April 30 U.S.-EU summit. Few Western climate negotiators expect China to accept caps from 2013 but do want to see a timeline for that.... Latest data shows China is building a coal-fired power plant every four days, British foreign ministry official John Ashton said on Monday. Growth in the emerging Asian giant?s emissions puts in perspective Western efforts to fight climate change, Birol said. ?What we do in Europe may be with good intentions, may be very ethical... but if you put it in terms of numbers its meaning is very limited.? Read the whole thing. One could argue -- as China will -- that the U.S. produces far more pollutants per person -- not to mention the fact that the OECD countries are responsible for much of pre-existing pollution in the atmosphere. However, if this IPCC report is correct, then global warming will have disproportionate effects on the poorer countries of the world. From a bargaining perspective, it will be interesting to see whether this effect will put greater pressure on China than the United States.
Reuters reports the latest trends in CO2 emissons:
China will overtake the United States as the world?s biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday. The estimate is much firmer than the IEA?s previous forecast, last November, that on current trends China would overtake the United States before 2010. ?Either this year or next year,? IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol told Reuters, in answer to the question of when China would overtake the United States…. China is set to become the world?s top carbon emitter just as serious talks start to extend the U.N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012, potentially heaping pressure on Beijing to take more action on climate change. A copy of a so-far unpublished Chinese government global warming report, seen by Reuters, rejects binding caps on carbon emissions until the country?s modernisation, by the middle of this century, opting instead to brake emissions growth. The United States, which pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, would not join a new climate change regime unless it also applied to China and India, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union said on Wednesday. ?There will be no comprehensive global warming legislation coming out of the United States… that does not include limits or a programme for China, India and the rest of the developing world,? Ambassador C. Boyden Gray told Reuters in an interview ahead of an April 30 U.S.-EU summit. Few Western climate negotiators expect China to accept caps from 2013 but do want to see a timeline for that…. Latest data shows China is building a coal-fired power plant every four days, British foreign ministry official John Ashton said on Monday. Growth in the emerging Asian giant?s emissions puts in perspective Western efforts to fight climate change, Birol said. ?What we do in Europe may be with good intentions, may be very ethical… but if you put it in terms of numbers its meaning is very limited.?
Read the whole thing. One could argue — as China will — that the U.S. produces far more pollutants per person — not to mention the fact that the OECD countries are responsible for much of pre-existing pollution in the atmosphere. However, if this IPCC report is correct, then global warming will have disproportionate effects on the poorer countries of the world. From a bargaining perspective, it will be interesting to see whether this effect will put greater pressure on China than the United States.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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