Welcome to 'real world' of climate change
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E-mail Xinhua, December 4, 2012
Between 2006 and 2010, Chinese aggregate energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped 19.1 percent from that of 2005, which is equivalent to a reduction of 1.46 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
Despite its dependence on coal, the country is home to one of the world's leading green industries.
Last year, China more than doubled its solar power generation capacity and increased its wind and hydropower capacities. The country's current five-year plan includes ambitions to increase the proportion of energy generated from non-fossil fuels to 11.4 percent by 2015.
Moreover, China is open to negotiations on the continued enforcement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) beyond 2020, as long as the convention is based on the principles of fairness and "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities."
At the Durban climate conference in 2011, Xie Zhenhua, the head of the Chinese delegation, expressed the country's willingness to discuss binding emissions cuts after 2020.
Still, the problem remains of how the world could make arrangements for the years after 2020 when it can not settle on what to do prior to 2020.
The second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is now the most urgent need for the global climate talks. The Kyoto Protocol, reached in 1997, will expire by the end of this year.
It is time to ask what the United States has done. It dropped out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 and has refused any binding cuts. Without the participation of the world's largest economy, any progress in emissions reduction will be in vain.
A responsible global player, as the U.S. often advocates, should set an example for the rest of the world, instead of waiting for somebody else to compromise.
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