U.S. and China Both Pledge Nothing at U.N. Climate Summit

New York-At the United
Nations Climate Summit today, the world’s two biggest emitters
of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, both held off on
making any specific additional pledges regarding their future
emissions. In 2012, humanity emitted
36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, of which
10 billion came from China and 5.2 billion from the United States.
Convened by General-Secretary Ban Ki Moon, the Summit is supposed
to “catalyze action” in advance of the big U.N. climate change
conference at Paris in 2015. At the Paris conference, the nations
of the world are supposed to make pledges to cut their emissions
sufficient to keep future warming below the internationally agreed
upon threshold of 2 degrees Celsius. It is not at all clear that
today’s Summit catalyzed much more than pious clichés.

In his
remarks before the U.N. General Assembly, President Barack
Obama opened by noting that while the world is confronting the
current issues of terrorism, instability, inequality, and disease,
“there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century
more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and
growing threat of a changing climate.” The president proudly added
that since he took office the U.S. produces three times more
electricity from the wind and 10 times more from the sun. How much
is that? The Energy Information Administration reports that in 2013
electricity from wind power amounted to 4.13 percent
and solar to 0.23 percent of supply.

The president observed that “the United States has reduced our
total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on Earth.” In
fact, by 2012, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions were down by more
than 12 percent over the 2007 peak; down to about where they
were in 1994. However, emissions
upticked 2 percent in 2013. While the president reiterated his
pledge that the U.S. would by 2020 cut its greenhouse gas emissions
17 percent below the levels emitted in 2005, he held off making any
new ones, promising that “by early next year, we will put forward
our next emission target.”

With China clearly in mind, President Obama declared, “We can
only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this
effort by every nation –- developed and developing
alike. Nobody gets a pass.”

General
Secretary Ban Ki Moon had hoped to attract heads of state of most
the big emitting countries to the Summit, but China’s President Xi
Jinping declined to come. Instead, Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli

put forward China’s views at the international confab today.
Like Obama before him, Zhang largely stuck to restate China’s
earlier pledge of cutting its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent
by 2020 from the 2005 level. Carbon intensity is the ratio of
carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product –
basically burning ever less fossil fuel to produce goods. Zhang
noted that by 2013 China’s carbon intensity was already down by
28.5 percent. There is plenty of room to improve: China emits
almost twice as
much carbon dioxide per dollar of GDP as does the United
States.

Like President Obama, the Chinese vice-premier was not yet ready
to reveal his country’s negotiating bid just yet, stating, “We will
announce post-2020 actions on climate change as soon as we can.”
Zhang did, however, suggest that China’s future pledges with regard
to its greenhouse gas emissions will aim to bring “about marked
progress in reducing carbon intensity, increasing the share of
non-fossil fuels and raising the forest stock, as well as the
peaking of total CO2 emissions as early as possible.”
 

On the face of it, this part of Zhang’s statement – especially
the part about peaking emissions – should cheer those concerned
about man-made global warming. Well, maybe. In his remarks, Zhang
also restated China’s dogged insistence on adherence to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In that treaty,
China and a bunch of other developing countries have no firm
obligations whatsoever to do anything about their emissions. That
treaty was adopted in 1992 when China’s was much poorer and its
emissions hovered around a third of what they are today. In other
words, Zhang seems to be insisting that the world’s biggest emitter
should be given a “pass” with regard to making any commitments
toward actual cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile Zhang
also declared that “developed countries need to intensify emission
reduction and fulfill their commitment of annual financial support
of 100 billion US dollars and technology transfer to developing
countries by 2020.”

I plan to do a more in-depth report and analysis of what
happened – and did not happen – at the U.N. Climate Summit later
this week.