Surprise U.S.-China climate deal reverberates north and south
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all he's come up with so far is a 15-year old Tiananmen Square image... and, of course, his favourite ROFL seal: arf, arf, arf
well yes... targets/commitments should be higher (and that may realize in the Dec 2015 Paris COP) but there's already enough exploding heads around here as it is! :lol:
The US will not be acting in it's own self interest if this deal becomes reality.
Rationale for exempting two of the world's most biggest polluters? I know the rationale... India and China were looking out for their own best interests and pretty much said don't even think about it. The UN being as weak as it always is went after the low hanging fruit... Europe and N. America.
Therefore the U.S. made NO commitments! We weren't part of it.
Canada was though. They bailed when they could not reach the assigned goals and owed $14 BILLION. Suddenly Kyoto wasn't such a good deal. Good for Canada!
More insults... more hypocrisy! Keep going fool!
the U.S. signed it and with that signature committed to targeted emission reductions... the U.S. chose to turn its back on it's signed agreement and commitments made therein... and all the influence it brought to drafting the treaty... and all the influence it carried in bringing other nations to also commit to targets and sign the treaty based upon U.S. participation... by refusing to ratify it domestically. If it makes you somehow feel better by emphasing the ratification side while ignoring the negotiation and signatory side... hey, have at er! :lol:
Massive. Close US coal power to the point of power shortages and export the coal for coking to make steel at a ratio of 1.8t of CO2 to 1t of steel.
China produces 48% of the world's steel.
Good thing XL is made from recycled steel with hydro run electric furnaces right here in sunny SK. No coke needed.
I didn't insult you! I gave a factual account of all you've brought forward to substantiate your repeated ROFL seal 'arf, arf, arf' image throwdown, as to why you continue to suggest China won't meet it's agreement obligations. As I said, all you've come up with so far, is your repeat posting of that 15-year old Tiananmen Square image... and, of course, the repeating of your favourite ROFL seal image: arf, arf, arf
Remember Cash for Clunker green iniative to recycle cars to buy subsidized fuel efficient cars? China refused US cash for interest payments and demanded raw materials.
How heartwarming is that?
How much interest is being written off in this alleged deal?
How heartwarming is that?
How much interest is being written off in this alleged deal?
Gotta wonder if that was part of the deal made that delivered the opportunity for China to increase (peak) their emissions for 15 or so years.
Any ecotard would be crying about how the US is 'exporting their CO2' to China... All a big steaming pile of horse sh*t of course, but that would be an easy negotiation point for anyone
China opens a new coal fired power plant about every ten days. Drive around the major cities of China and one finds such power plants springing up out of nowhere. How can China keep its commitments when it relies so heavily on coal for the generation of power? At night Beijing and Shanghai are lit up like Las Vegas on steroids.
Yabut even if it was an insult, he's allowed and you are not and that clearly makes you the hypocrite.
You just can't beat that kinda logic you eeeediot.
I'll post the image again... as you appear intent on ignoring it. Look at the graphic and reconcile it with the year of the Kyoto Protocol and the level of Chinese industrialization at that point. China today: 1.4 billion people... the U.S. today: 315 million people. Would you like to provide a current day number for per-capita emissions... U.S. versus China... sure you would! Notwithstanding, of course, the emissions western countries outsource to China! There ya go!
You have evidence they will? Given they have done absolutely nothing so far this should be good to hear.
China Is More Likely to Keep Its Climate Promise Than We Are
A defining feature of the landmark climate agreement announced by the United States and China on Wednesday is its asymmetry. The United States must reduce its carbon emissions substantially by 2025; China’s can keep growing until 2030.
There’s a good reason for that imbalance. The United States has polluted far more than China, historically, and by now its economy is fully mature. In fact, U.S. emissions are already trending downward despite a slight bump last year. The question now is, how far down can they go?
China, in contrast, is in a much earlier stage of economic development, and its emissions have been rising quickly from their historically low per capita levels. But they’re still far lower than those of the United States—again, on a per capita basis, which is the only fair way to calculate them. China also remains much poorer than the U.S. and faces soaring energy demand for decades to come. So for China, reining in its emissions growth is a challenge comparable to reducing emissions for the United States. China’s question is not how far down its emissions can go, but how far up they will go before they finally start to go down.
The real asymmetry in the deal, then, is not about which side’s targets are harder. It’s about which side is more likely to meet those targets. And the answer to that is almost certainly the opposite of what Republican leaders were quick to assume. Spoiler: It’s China.
This isn’t to say that China’s government is more trustworthy than ours on the whole. But there are three good reasons why China is a better bet than the United States to hold up its end of this particular bargain.
1. China’s government has more power to implement its agreements.
President Obama has taken some big steps that are likely to significantly cut U.S. emissions, most notably passing new EPA restrictions on coal-fired power plants. But those alone will not be enough to reduce emissions to the agreed-upon target of 26 percent below 2005 levels in the next 10 years. Further action will require acts of Congress, whose Republican leaders are already pledging to fight Obama every step of the way.
Even the rules Obama has already enacted could be undermined by future legislative or executive actions, especially if a Republican takes the White House—which is highly likely to happen at some point between now and 2025. Remember, the Clinton administration had signed an even bigger climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, before George W. Bush unilaterally scuttled it shortly after taking office.
China’s national government does not wield the absolute power that Westerners sometimes attribute to it. But it does have much freer rein to implement sweeping policy changes than does the U.S. government, because there is no opposition party to block its initiatives. Whereas Obama is making an agreement that will be left largely to his successors to uphold, China’s Communist Party expects to remain in power for the duration of the deal.
2. China’s government has greater incentives to implement its agreements.
A corollary to the Chinese government’s greater ability to reduce the country’s emissions is that it will also bear greater political costs if it fails. Look at it this way: If the United States falls short of its targets, Democrats will be able to blame Republicans for tying their hands. “It wasn’t our fault,” they’ll say. “We did everything we could.” Republicans, meanwhile, will blame the Democrats for making the deal in the first place. Their leader in the Senate is already calling it “unrealistic” and complaining that meeting the targets “would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs.”
China’s government knows it will have no such excuses handy if it fails to live up to its word. The Communist Party would bear the full brunt of the embarrassment. And so it would be unlikely to take on this sort of voluntary commitment if it weren’t highly confident that the targets were attainable.
Besides, as my colleague Joshua Keating points out, China already had ample incentive to take serious action on its carbon emissions. It has invested heavily in renewable energy technology, becoming the world’s largest supplier of solar panels. More importantly, the pollution from coal power plants in the country’s major cities has become unbearable at times, creating domestic political pressure to shift to cleaner technologies.
3. China may already be on track to meet its targets.
As noted above, China is already moving aggressively to curb its carbon-spewing ways. In addition to its renewable energy investments, it has announced plans for the world’s largest carbon-trading market, scheduled to start in 2016.
But it might not even take a big policy shift in order for the country to meet the targets it agreed to on Wednesday. Thanks to broader development trends, like a projected slowing of population growth and urbanization, some analysts were already forecasting that China’s emissions would peak by 2030. In fact, my colleague Jordan Weissmann notes that the country’s coal consumption actually decreased in 2013 even as its economy continued to grow. There is some ground for skepticism about the accuracy of the country's carbon accounting, but there’s little doubt that China’s government is sincere in its desire to clean up its act. It sees cleaner air as conducive to its long-term economic rise, rather than at odds with it.
For all of these reasons, the smart money is on China to make good on its promises. The United States is a much shakier bet, especially since Republicans are already laying the groundwork to sabotage our end of the deal. Their excuse for opposing the agreement is sadly ironic: China, they insist, can’t be trusted.
U.S. China climate agreement: China more likely to meet its targets.
Somehow I just don't see how getting rid of coal fired plants and building nukes instead is doing anything to clean up the environment. So far anyone I have talked to that claims this is just a shill for the nuke industry and casually ignore all the dangers.
Wrong. Under our system, the president's signature isn't valid without consent of the Senate. Ergo "with that signature" we did not "commit to targeted emission reductions."
So in essence China will keep and increase their emmissions until 2030. What about this 'we gotta act now before its too late' stuff I keep hearing from the GWers? Sounds like I should not worry about it until then either since it is clearly not an immediate concern.
Also why on Earth would the USA sign such a stupid thing? We do it now and you may do it in 2030.
you keep bringing a lot of anecdote! Yes, China is heavily invested in coal... but is leading CCS R&D and trial deployment... is decommisioning older less efficient plants in favour of new higher efficiency plants. That "one every 10 days" meme is based on a now dated U.S. government projection, one made long before China turned to nuclear: