June 4, 2007 1:33 p.m.
BEIJING -- China issued a long-awaited plan for addressing climate change that reiterates its existing energy-efficiency targets and fails to include caps on emissions of greenhouse gases -- moves that reduce the chances of a breakthrough in climate-change talks at this week's meeting of world leaders.
In what it called its first national climate-change plan, China said Monday that it recognizes the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions -- which most scientists believe lead to global warming -- and pledged to broadly integrate efforts to mitigate such emissions into an overall plan for sustainable economic development. But officials rejected calls for specific targets for reducing China's greenhouse-gas emissions.
"To ask the developing countries to lower emissions too early, too abruptly and too bluntly will hinder their development and hamper efforts to achieve industrialization and modernization," Ma Kai, China's top economic-planning official, said at a news conference to unveil the national climate-change strategy.
Global warming will be a central topic at the meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight leading nations beginning Wednesday in Germany, which China's President Hu Jintao is to attend. Some experts expect China to surpass the U.S. this year as the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, and some in the European Union and elsewhere are pressuring Beijing to agree to some form of commitment to reduce its production of such gases.
Last week, the U.S. removed a major obstacle for an international agreement, when President George W. Bush reversed longstanding policy and called on economic powers to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for a last-minute deal on climate change at the G-8 meeting she is hosting. But China's adamant refusal to accept any targets on its carbon emissions could stymie that goal.
Chinese officials said Monday that they welcome the new U.S. position, but Mr. Ma said his government still prefers that a deal, like the Kyoto Protocol, be arranged through the United Nations. Beijing is a signatory to that agreement, which excludes China and other developing countries from emissions caps. The U.S. move "is not a substitute" for a U.N.-brokered deal on climate change, said Mr. Ma, who is chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.
Chinese scientists have argued that the country is particularly vulnerable to climate change because it has scarce land and water resources and many of its major economic centers sit in low-lying coastal areas.
China's government says rich industrialized nations have contributed the bulk of greenhouse gases historically and should bear the brunt of the cleanup costs. It says caps on developing countries are unfair. While China is struggling with an unprecedented wave of industrialization and urbanization that has improved conditions for many of its people, millions of peasants remain poor, and Chinese officials say alleviating poverty takes priority over climate change.
While refusing to accept limits on greenhouse gases, Mr. Ma said China will reduce such gases through its drive to increase energy efficiency. About two-thirds of China's greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuels such as coal or oil for energy. The government reiterated the target that it set a year ago of reducing energy consumption per unit of economic output by 20% between 2006 and 2010.
Mr. Ma said reaching that goal would mean releasing less carbon dioxide, a prominent greenhouse gas. But so far, China has had only limited success in reaching its energy-efficiency targets, and the breakneck pace of its economic growth could continue to make that difficult.
Last year, for example, China failed to meet its first-year target of cutting energy consumption relative to economic output by 4%, managing instead to reduce it by 1.23%. Nonetheless, that reduction did reverse the trend of deterioration in China's energy efficiency.
Mr. Ma asserted that from the start of the Industrial Revolution until 1950, 95% of carbon dioxide came from developed countries. From 1950 to 2002, developed countries accounted for 77% of greenhouse gases, he said.
In the past half decade, however, China has experienced a surge in investment in energy-intensive heavy industry such as steel, cement and chemical manufacturing, thanks to the rapid construction of its cities and low fuel prices.
Despite government crackdowns on pollution, investment in polluting industries has increased. In the first quarter , investment in the six dirtiest industries grew 20.6% from a year earlier, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. The government is pledging another crackdown as well as new taxes on fuel and higher electricity prices.
A work report on pollution and energy efficiency released Sunday by the government mentions a 10% reduction in major pollutants by 2010, but carbon dioxide is excluded.
No comments:
Post a Comment