Fatalistic Friday: China Says No to Greenhouse Gas Cuts

by Emily Gertz

category: Fatalistic Friday

Published June 12, 2009 @ 10:45AM PT

One None From Column USA, None from Column PRC:
UPDATE, 4:36 pm: Todd Stern, the special State Department Envoy for climate change, said yesterday, "We don't expect China to take a national cap at this stage...We understand China's paramount need to grow and develop for its people," he said. "Our demand is that the development, with the available technologies, is based on low-carbon growth." (China Daily)

"[The Chinese] want from us technology, and we want from them action," said Jonathan Pershing, a member of the U.S. delegation. But they "don't want any technology. They want some of the advanced technologies which are part of our own intellectual capital," Pershing told Public Radio International's Living on Earth program. (AP)

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According to the U.S., this week's talks with Beijing about curbing climate-disrupting pollution were "a step in the right direction."

But Beijing announced yesterday that the country would not accept binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. "China is still a developing country and the present task confronting China is to develop its economy and alleviate poverty, as well as raise the living standard of its people," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, according to Agency France-Presse. "Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in its emissions, so it is not possible for China in that context to accept a binding or compulsory target."

As the world's two top producers of human-propelled greenhouse gases, the U.S. and China must both take strong action to curb emissions, if the world is to blunt the worst impacts of global warming. (AFP)

I Bart in Your General Direction: At a Tuesday hearing of the House Energy & Commerce Committee related to climate legislation, Rev. Dr. Maria Castellanos of the United Church of Christ urged Congress to step up to its ethical obligations to the globe's poor, who are now and will continue to suffer the worst from global warming. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) appeared unmoved, at least to one reporter. "A minute or two into her testimony, ranking minority member Joe Barton (Tex.)—who had heretofore been paying close attention, having, after all, been the one to insist on the hearing in the first place—sighed,  picked up a newspaper,  and began reading," reports Dave Roberts. "Conspicuously.  I asked Meghan McNamara, sitting next to me, 'Is Barton reading the newspaper?'

"She peered in his direction. 'Yes,' she said. It’s the sports section.;" (Grist)

Drill, Fission, Drill: The House GOP this week released its own version of a national climate and energy strategy, "badly outnumbered and months behind in the debate." The bill calls for increased oil and gas production in both public (i.e., taxpayer-subsidized) and private lands, and building 100 new nuclear power stations in the next 20 years. It omits any mandatory cap on climate-disrupting gases, instead counting on the free market to promote clean energy and thus control the heat-trapping emissions. The bill is less a serious policy proposal and more of a Hail Mary pass: "Republican officials said they were intending to offer the proposal, known as the American Energy Act, as a substitute for the bill sponsored by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts...Republican aides said they were hoping their bill would lure some of those Democrats away and give Republicans something to support, rather than simply opposing the Democratic plan." (The New York Times)

Good Old Energy Tax Party: The GOP's plan would result in a 25% increase in energy costs for the average American ratepayer. It is identical to the energy plan implemented under the Bush-Cheney administration, which ultimately the average American household $1,100 in increased energy costs. Further, taxpayers will be on the hook for the 100 nuclear power stations: "The cornerstone of the GOP plan...is an $800 billion plan to build 100 nukes...  Taxpayers will assume the full liability for any default on those nuclear plants.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates the likely default rate of these loans at over 50% — so that’s $400 billion down the toilet right there."

The Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate legislation "could save $3,900 per household by 2030, thanks to its strong emphasis on energy efficiency, which is utterly absent from the GOP plan." (ClimateProgress)

Does This Trend Make My Southern Hemisphere Look Fat? A wave of obesity in industrialized nations shares its root causes with the same problems that are causing global warming: We drive too much, eat too much crap, and use too many electric-powered gadgets. (Grist)

You Move Me: Tens of millions of people will become climate refugees over the next deveral decades, unless the current pace of global warming is slowed or stopped. As rainfall cycles change, fresh water supplies move or vanish, and ocean levels rise, "[R]ather than a migration from poor countries to rich ones, the exodus is most likely to unfold within poor nations, with a movement mainly from the countryside to cities, thus further burdening urban infrastructure." This via a new study done jointly by Columbia University, United Nations University, and the non-profit CARE International, presented at climate talks this week in Bonn, Germany. (AFP)

And the rest of the worst in the week's global warming news:

Weather Ravages Brazil: From Amazon basin rain to drought in the south...[E]xperts suspect global warming may be driving wild climate swings that appear to be punishing the Amazon with increasing frequency. (The Washington Times)

US environmentalists remain irrationally committed to a losing strategy on climate action (JP Greenhouse)

Congress is all but abandoning President Obama's goal of producing one-quarter of the nation's electricity from clean energy sources by 2025. (AP)

Ocean conditions are already changing due to global warming, pretty much for the worse -- harming shellfish and crustaceans we rely upon for food, and organisms that show promise for life-saving marine-derived drugs. (McClatchy Newspapers)

Dozens reported killed in Amazon land protest: Indigenous residents protesting gas and oil development in Peru's remote Amazon last Friday got into a violent confrontation with police. Reports on the dead and injured have varied; at one point both authorities and Indian leaders reported 9 police and 25 protesters killed, with tens of police and Indians injured. (SEJ Headlines)

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Image: "The northern fringes of Greenland’s ice sheet experienced extreme melting in 2008...Red outlines the northern rim and parts of the west coast of Greenland [indicate] that the summer melting period in 2008 was longer than [the average number of melt days between 1979 and 2007] in many places. Many locations in northern Greenland experienced a record number of melt days. Temperatures at nearby ground-based weather stations were correspondingly high. The average temperature between June and August 2008 was as much as 3 degrees Celsius above average, with new record temperatures at many ground-based weather stations." Source: NASA Earth Observatory