China soars into the lead

[Bored Wombat]

Originally Posted by Rog

Kinda makes the whole Chinese exemption from Kyoto due to its 'developing' status rather moot.

Kyoto doesn't accomplish much in terms of progress against climate change. Its victory was to get the world involved, and it has been very successful at that. But to make progress the 2012 targets much be orders of magnitude more serious.

Reducing emissions to 1990 levels is a diplomatic accomplishment, but the world needs an 80% reduction on those levels.

So China's emissions do not really make Kyoto moot. From a climate change perspective it was already moot.

[Bored Wombat]

Originally Posted by forfismum

Now me dear Windy,thats not really accurate is it? In the Western world we have discovered that our industry and power generation is dirty and we know that we have to clean it up and we are doing so progressively.The Eastern countries have had the benefit of our experience and have chosen to ignore it and in fact have given two rude fingers to the environment.They have been aided and abetted by the dim dollops who invented carbon credits and other such nonsense.

I kind of disagree.
The eastern countries do not have any benefit from the USA's damage to the atmosphere. The USA is not paying for them to have greener technology.
Neither have they exactly given two rude fingers to the environment. Their coal generation is state of the art, and much cleaner per Watt than average western coal generation. Although this is probably a concession to resource management than the environment, it is nonetheless taking advantage of the experience of the west, to the extent that it doesn't interfere with China's development.
They would have been better aided and abetted by a system that issues carbon credits on the basis of population rather than rewarding countries that have been damaging the atmosphere the most prior to 1990 ... a simple enough concession to the arguably obvious observation that all men should be born with equal rights.

[celeritas]

I completely agree with the comments by "britishinchina". Its very difficult for anyone to understand the dynamics of a developing country like China or India unless you are actually from there or have taken real effort in studying and understanding them.

Its very easy to blame the developing countries for the amount of GHG emissions from there. However, its very important to understand that in last century the world has become a Global EcoSystem and anything done anywhere does affect other parts. If the West or the European nations are developed, countries like China and India play an important part where they act as their offshore development and production partners. At the same time this also gives them a chance to become developing nations.

What IPCC is proposing and the Kyoto protocol is keeping all the dynamics in mind and is not just a whim and fancy of someone. They are at least acting as against countries and people who are denying and just searching for someone to blame at.

Celeritas

(Glecosys - the GLobal ECOSYStem)