International Climate Negotiations Are Dead (Thanks America), But That’s Not Stopping China

Posted on 28. Jul, 2010 by Ross in Asia, Government Policy, North America

Whatever lingering hopes the most blindly optimistic of climate negotiators had of finding further progress in the wake of the Copenhagen disaster was extinguished by the announcement that the US Senate was to abandon its attempts to pass some form of carbon emissions regulation. However, other countries including China are continuing with their decarbonisation strategies regardless, leaving the US in an ever-dwindling ostrich block of paralysed polluters.

Despite well-grounded accusations that China was the primary reason that Copenhagen failed, the Obama Administration was the other principle architect of the last-minute BASIC coup which sidestepped negotiations to railroad through the agendas of the USA, Brazil, South Africa, India and China, leaving the rest of the world sidelined and disregarded.

Aside from Obama having a flight to catch and not intending to miss it(!), the move was strongly in the US government’s interests. Without having won approval for climate legislation in both the Senate and Congress, with politicians played for fools by China, America could not guarantee any commitments laid on the table at the conference - a mistake made previously by Al Gore at Kyoto. Copenhagen was therefore sacrificed by the US in an effort to stall for time: to come to the negotiating table with something concrete which it could win more concessions for. All that was missing was an iconic paper-waving disembarkation from Airforce One with the words ‘Polar bears for our time’.

However, the stalling tactics have only delayed what some will claim was inevitable. The US Senate has finally abandoned it’s attempt to pass cap-and-trade legislation, unwilling to expend further political capital to gain sufficient support for the measures. The replacement bill now being formed has almost no obligations towards targets, renewable energy or indeed anything else which will help the country to come close to meeting it’s measly target of a 4% carbon emission reduction by 2020 against 1990 levels.

In the absence of an over-arching national cap-and-trade framework, the US will be left relying on smaller regional initiatives and on the EPA to attack individual emitters using the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act - a scenario that politicians were desperate to avoid, but obviously not desperate enough. The likelihood of these efforts and those of individual companies compensating for the country growing out of recession again is somewhat remote.

By contrast, China Daily has announced that the Chinese government intends to have a national cap-and-trade scheme in place within the next five years. Despite being the most polluting country on Earth, China still has per capita emissions far below most of the developed world, and plans to cut it’s carbon intensity by around 40% by 2020 from 2005 levels.

Unlike the US, Chinese politicians have the luxury of not needing to listen quite as closely to the voices of their people, although the voice of business often whispers in the ears of decision-makers just as loudly. Despite that, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has signalled that heavily-polluting factories face closure in order for China to hit its targets, showing that the Chinese are very serious in their intentions towards climate change. The worst iron, steel and cement producers will be placed in the same firing line as coal power stations, with reduced capacity and orders for the worst offenders.

All this despite having no legal obligations to do so - why? China is aware that it is emerging onto the world stage as a maturing superpower, and as a result will be expected to play it’s part in helping solve the world’s problems. Dominating the green industries of the future will guarantee industrial supremacy, but the goodwill from other nations it has so sorely lacked in the past will help build greater trade relations and unlock greater supplies of raw resources, enabling China’s economy to continue to grow not just past the US, but to stay ahead of it’s most likely future rival: India.

Image by Ross Tucknott