U.N.: China Poised To Lead Climate Change Fight

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- As the United States lags on climate legislation, China is poised to join the European Union in claiming "front-runner" status among nations battling climate change, the U.N. climate chief said Monday.

Yvo de Boer said in an Associated Press interview 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.

The development marks a dramatic turnabout. The United States, under former President George W. Bush's administration, long cited inaction by China and India as the reason for rejecting mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.

"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. 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.

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.

President Barack Obama has been trying to build momentum for a new climate pact to succeed the Kyoto accord that required mandatory cuts in atmospheric warming gases but expires at the end of 2012. His administration has announced a target of returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse emissions by 2020.

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.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in article published Monday that "the negotiations are proceeding so slowly that a deal is in grave danger."

He promised to attend the Copenhagen talks and called on other heads of state to join him for "a historic moment: the ultimate test of global cooperation." Environment ministers are scheduled to be the highest-ranking officials there.

"If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause," he wrote in an article Newsweek.

Britain's Climate Secretary Ed Miliband sees reasons to be hopeful that a deal could be reached.

"Actually, I think when you look at the jigsaw pieces on the board, there are reasons to be optimistic. Japan has just upped its ambition and said it's going to cut its emissions by 25 percent by 2020. India said that it will quantify its actions in terms of emissions by 2020. That is a new statement. We are expecting from (China's) President Hu (Jintao) tomorrow statements about where China is going," Miliband said.

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 on 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 set the United States' first federal mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. 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.

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.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Monday the Copenhagen meeting could end in deadlock unless all participants agree to sweeping cuts in greenhouse gases.

"The public in Europe would not accept (such cuts) in the EU if the rest of the world does not move too," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Barroso warned that inaction on climate change would cut the world's gross economic output by five percent a year.

"We must see that the costs of inaction are higher from an economic point of view than the costs of action," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

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 Climate Group, a London-based nonprofit advocacy organization, said it hoped the new research would help break the "deadlock" in global climate talks.

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.

"In economic terms, certainly in the medium and long-term, it's hugely to our economic benefit to get a global agreement," he told reporters at a New York hotel Sunday.

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 Bush, whose administration claimed for years the Kyoto accord would have cost the U.S. economy 5 million jobs if Bush had not rejected it.

"I can't say I ever investigated that particular claim in detail," said Blair, who was 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."

Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer and Slobodan Lekic contributed to this report.

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Climate Change 9/21/2009 11:27:00 AM Any decisons you don't make will be made for you.....
Hah! 9/21/2009 11:39:00 AM UN blowhard pumps fist for yet another Kyoto non-signee, who wanted an exemption for 3rd world countries, and counted itself as 3rd world. Here in the US, at least we scrub our coal of sulfur before burning it -- the Chinese don't. They are welcome to their Great Leap Forward in climate change.
U.N.: China Poised To Lead Climate Change Fight 9/21/2009 11:44:00 AM somebody has to do it
Climate Change 9/21/2009 11:46:00 AM This is not an accurate measure if the chinese are just starting too make a difference, the USA has been doing this for years,
Sure we have lots of money and jobs to give 9/21/2009 11:47:00 AM If the UN says it, it is likely untrue.
U.N.: China Poised To Lead Climate Change Fight 9/21/2009 11:52:00 AM Talk is cheap... I'll believe it when I see it. Lack of environmental controls ( and worker safety regulations) is what gave the Chinese their advantage over the west. Now by "attempting" to address the topic, they can feign understanding of the problem, take the "high ground" in the debate, but all the while drag their feet on the subject. "Green" initiatives will create jobs in the west when the playing field is level. China cannot afford this to happen, at least as long as the west still have funds to spend on crap.
On top of that... 9/21/2009 11:57:00 AM What better way to tie the hands of your competitors/enemies. They ( the West) will play fair, while we (China) do what we want.
Greenies 9/21/2009 12:01:00 PM "Bush rejected the 1997 Kyoto agreement". Bush wasn't president in 1997. Why didn't Clinton jump on it? He had 3 years and sat on his hands. He knew it was bunk because of the cost. Everyone wants it no one wants to pay for it. As far as creating jobs. Proof will be in the pudding! We haven't seen any new jobs in any of the iniatives at this juncture. There are plenty of jobs here in coal mining, natural gas development and Oil shale explotation. They all cost money. No one wants to pay for it. Get the poorer countries to pony up on their own and quit trying to make the richer nations out to be the bad guys.
Leading the Climate Change Fight 9/21/2009 12:08:00 PM Let China take on the climate change fight. This will only add the cost of Chinese made products. Fighting climate change is like fighting the tides, you can command them to stop, but the waters will keep on rising. Of course many a dollar has been wasted tilting windmills. Might as well spend our tax money developing a perpetual motion machine. Now-a-days quite a few municipal governments in depressed states like Michigan and Wisconsin will offer tax credits if you will set up a factory in their vicinity to build perpetual motion machines of a new design. It is a P. T. Barnum world all right.
China! Savior of Earth! 9/21/2009 12:18:00 PM This is the usual warmie nonsense from the usual suspects with their ulterior motives, whereby they profit from the hoax. The world has been cooling for maybe a decade, and the temperature is about what it was 30 years ago, while CO2 levels keep climbing. Plants are all growing rumbustiously because they love CO2. As far as these "green jobs" goes, they are a unicorn fantasy. Look at the real technological revolutions of the past - the telephone, electrification, the internal combustion engine. They endure, not because the industry itself creates jobs, but because they enable huge efficiencies in all business operations. But the whole point of these carbon limitation schemes is to make energy more expensive and less available, so all business operations will become less efficient. Thus overall, jobs and economic output will be less, not more.
China Poised To Lead Climate Change Fight 9/21/2009 12:48:00 PM Even the Chinese people don't believe whatever their leaders say, so why should we believe it? The Chinese culture is about fake and hooligan. The whole world will soon learn this. We know the Chinese for thousands of years. When the US helped China to get into the WTO, the whole world curse it. He who creates a monster must destroy or tame it.
Rich Nations????? 9/21/2009 1:00:00 PM Wait, wait!!! The UN and G20 summits are meant to pressure the US and OTHER RICH nations to poney up billions for developing nations to cut their emissions? Where the hell does the world get that just because we spend money like drunken politicians that we are a RICH nation? Time to back off and let the Saudis and other middle-east fat-cat sheiks step up to the plate. The Swiss might jump in here too for what the world has spent to protect these and other pacifist profiteers who have made billions from raping Jews and funding despots across the decades.
Who is working for a better future 9/21/2009 1:01:00 PM Just another example of how we are relinquishing our world leadership to China and others. What we have to ask ourselves is what kind of world we want to leave our children and grand children. They will not care who was willing to cut CO2 emissions and by how much they will only see our selfishness and unwillingness to sacrifice at all for future generations. I am losing hope that my generation (I am 51) will not be seen by history as possibly the worst generation to have every inhabited the earth.
Where is the Signature? 9/21/2009 2:25:00 PM Words are cheap, wait for China (and the other BRICs) to sign on the treaty dotted line-- on the same basis as everyone else.
I've heard this before 9/21/2009 2:28:00 PM Intellectual property rights? How about human rights? Freedom of speech? The right of the workers to organize? The right to assemble? We can go on and on but I'll believe that the Chinese government is actually doing one of these when I see it. They are much more interested in keeping power for themselves. The rest is all smoke and mirrors.
...and just maybe 9/21/2009 3:43:00 PM for their next trick, they'll figure out how to keep the Melamine out of infant formula and diary products and the lead paint out of toys for children. Becoming more environmentally friendly is so much easier than either of those un-important little things. Give us a break, we've had all the lip service we need from the Chinese government.
"Bush had rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol ..." 9/21/2009 4:15:00 PM Well, Heilprin seems not to have a clue that neither Bush was President in 1997. He conveniently forgot to tell you (or was ignorant of the fact) the Senate shot down the treaty 98-0. That's right, not one Senator, Republican or Democrat, voted for it for the obvious reason it was aimed at the US and only the US. The only thing we could learn from the Red Chinese is BUILD MORE NUKES! And pleeeze stop buying into the whole global warming nonsense. Thousands of scientists now say it's a fantasy. There's a reason they had to change the name from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change".
Smoke and mirrors 9/21/2009 4:45:00 PM Magic works by deception. While you look here something else happens there. China knows if both of our countries are ordered to cut back, the US will live up to its obligation and further destroy its industry while they may build a few new factories and be still way above US levels of emissions. The standard of living is greater in several European countries than the US so who is really rich? By the way, shouldn't the people who profit from supplying fossil fuels be the ones to pay for the cleanup? Its like stores that sell glass and plastic bottles and bag their wares in plastic shopping bags take all those containers and bags back for recycling.
Climate Change 9/21/2009 5:35:00 PM I still have not seen any real proof of anthropogenic climate change. Correlation does not equal causation and there is now a large "climate change” industry that benefits from the increased legislation. I have made a personal commitment to only use solar energy; although some of it has been stored in coal, oil and wood.
UN Leadership is Anti-American- China Sucks! 9/21/2009 6:25:00 PM USA can and should continue to become energy efficient and seek to reduce our negative impact on our Earth. USA all the way...China Sucks and so does the useless UN.
Job creation 9/21/2009 7:01:00 PM "...former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says 10 million jobs could be created by 2020." He doesn't mention that 12 million will be lost for a net loss of 2 million. Check out Spain where they've gone in for "green" jobs - they've had a net loss of 2 jobs for every one created. And if China reduces their pollution by 25% or whatever, they will still be far more polluting than the U.S.
Greening of China? Climate Change?? 9/21/2009 11:52:00 PM The only greening we are likely to see in China is green (lead based)paint! And yes, we do have climate change. We call it "seasons". Like every thing else on Earth, the climates run in cycles. Always have, always will, because we puny humans do not control the weather! None of the feeble efforts here on Earth will or can cause change, because it simply is not something that we can do.
China's false promises 9/23/2009 2:05:00 PM According to the Wall street Journal, Sept 22, 2009, they do not pledge specific reductions , but only reductions in CO2 emissions "per unit of economic output". So they can become more efficient, but as their economy is growing a t 8-10% a year, their CO2 emissions can still rise. As other commenters have written, the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is weak at best, rather a political agenda that will tras the US economy, affect the climate little if at all. Yet the Obama administration will ram this through. People-start screaming to your senators! Stop this disaster. Question the dubious computer models !

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