Government and Politics

China: I’ll do it my way

“China plan on global warming”
By Jim Yardley and Andrew C. Revkin
July 6, 2007

The New York Times reported that China released its first national strategy on climate change last Monday. The report emphasizes a plan to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2010.

[If you can't read the NY Times story because you don't have a subscription, turn to The China Daily, which posts the entire article for free.]

The U.S. is still pressuring China to place mandatory caps on its emissions, but China doesn’t want to.

China has resisted mandatory reductions in emissions, arguing that it is still a developing country and needs to balance environmental improvements with maintaining economic growth.

Furthermore, it is unlikely the Chinese government will place caps on emissions until the United States leads by example.

“China is not going to act in any sort of mandatory-control way until the United States does first,” said Joseph Kruger, policy director for the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group in Washington.

So now we have the world’s two biggest air polluters rejecting any sort of solid pledge to help reduce the causes of global warming.

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