China Poised to Lead in Climate Change
As the United States lags on climate legislation, the U.N. climate chief says China is poised to join the European Union in claiming "front-runner" status among nations battling climate change.
Yvo de Boer said in an Associated Press interview Monday that China is leaping ahead of the United States with domestic plans for more energy efficiency, renewable sources of power, cuts in vehicle pollution and closures of dirty plants.
"China and India have announced very ambitious national climate change plans. In the case of China, so ambitious that it could well become the front-runner in the fight to address climate change," de Boer said. "The big question mark is the U.S."
He spoke on the eve of a U.N. summit of 100 world leaders intended to rally momentum for crafting a new global climate pact at Copenhagen, Denmark in December. President Bush had rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for cutting global emissions of warming gases based on its exclusion of major developing nations like China and India.
Chinese President Hu Jintao will announce new plans to fight global warming at a U.N. summit on climate change on Tuesday. China already has said it is seeking to use 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
U.N. Climate Change Conference 2009: Copenhagen (Official Site)
China and the U.S. together account for about 40 percent of all the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other industrial warming gases.
De Boer said he also was encouraged by Japan's new goal of a 25 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.
(Left: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke (center) chats with Chinese officers as he visits a turbine inside the China Resources Golden Concord-Co-generation Plant in Beijing, July 15, 2009. Its combined gas-steam turbines reduced the plant's emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides by more than 2,300 tons a year.)
But with Congress moving slowly on a measure to curb emissions, the United States could soon find itself with little influence when 120 countries convene in Copenhagen.
The U.N. summit on climate change Tuesday and the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh at the end of this week are intended to add pressure the United States and other rich nations to commit to cuts and cough up billions of dollars to help developing nations install new technologies and take other actions to adapt to climate change.
The House passed a bill this year that would . Factories, power plants and other sources would be required to cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by mid-century. (Senate action is still pending.)
The EU is urging other rich countries to match its pledge to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and has said it would cut up to 30 percent if other rich countries follow suit.
A new climate report released Monday by a climate initiative led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says 10 million jobs could be created by 2020, if developing nations agree to big cuts in greenhouse gases.
The initiative by Blair and the London-based Climate Group said it hoped the new research would help break the "deadlock" in global climate talks.
"Cutting the Cost: The Economic Benefits of Collaborative Climate Action"
The report is based on computer modeling by Cambridge University economists. It also shows a global climate agreement could increase the world's GDP by 0.8 percent by 2020, as compared with the projected gross domestic product with no climate action.
(Left: A chimney emits smokes at a factory in Zhenhai, Zhejiang Province, China on June 3, 2009. China recently surpassed the United States as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.)
Blair acknowledged the pain of short-term investment, particularly during a global financial crisis, but called the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations "the moment when we move from a campaign to a policy program."
Blair also said climate change was one key area where his ideas diverged from those of President Bush, whose administration claimed for years the Kyoto accord would have cost the U.S. economy 5 million jobs if Mr. Bush had not .
"I can't say I ever investigated that particular claim in detail," said Blair, who was Mr. Bush's closest ally on the Iraq war - a stance that ultimately contributed to Blair's decline in popularity at home and his stepping down as both Labor Party leader and prime minister.
"But all I can tell you from our perspective in the U.K. - and if you look at the rest of Europe - we have not been losing jobs as a result of taking action on climate change. If anything, we've been gaining jobs."
By Associated Press Writer John Heilprin