How China May Have Just Changed The Climate Game

[kristopher]

How China May Have Just Changed The Climate Game
By Zack Beauchamp on May 30, 2013 at 3:40 pm


Last week, the Chinese government made a critical move toward placing a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide it would emit. That’s a significant decision especially when seen in context of the local emissions permit trading schemes being tried out around the country. Depending on how tight the cap is, this could be a big deal in its own right: China is the world’s largest and fastest-growing emitter. Its citizens are already suffering as a consequence.

But the impact of the Chinese decision could be even broader. Understanding why requires seeing climate change as an issue that’s every bit as much about the structure of international politics as it is about domestic policy or environmental science.

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Broadly speaking, it’s useful to think of the international climate regime in three parts: power, ideas, and institutions. Power is the ability that states, corporations, or other actors have to get what what they want — think of how the Bush Administration wielded American economic clout to weaken the Kyoto protocol. Power determines who has the most say over how any climate agreement ends up going down in practice and hence whose interests end up being reflected in practice.

Ideas are the basic beliefs that determine, sometimes independent of interests, what states believe about environmental problems. A good example here is the way the UN IPCC report helped convince the international community that climate change was a real threat they needed to address. Ideas matter because they set the terms of the international climate debate on issues like how urgent a problem climate change is, who should bear the costs of solving it, and what sorts of policy options would be best suited to mitigating its effects if everyone could agree to them.

Power and ideas aren’t conceptually separate in a neat sense...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/page/2/?mobile=nc

[AverageJoe90]

1. Good news.

Though it seems to me that Beijing is only doing this to save their own asses(tens of thousands of Chinese still die thanks to air pollution every year), and not because they actually care about the people, at least it's a step forward. Hopefully, we'll do something long before we get to that stage......

[caraher]

2. Unfortunately, the good news report may be untrue

Turns out that the Chinese government did not, in fact, commit to such a cap.

The Financial Times and Independent newspapers both said last month that China is looking to introduce a cap in 2016. The Independent cited a proposal by the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning agency where Su works. The FT cited Jiang Kejun, an NDRC carbon-policy researcher.

“The paper quoted an expert,” Su said today in an interview in Bonn, where two weeks of climate talks began yesterday. “It’s not necessarily presenting the view of the government or the NDRC. The NDRC would reaffirm that we have committed to a carbon-intensity target by 2020.”

Su’s comments are the first by a senior Chinese negotiator since the reports were published. While not an outright denial, they suggest China isn’t ready to announce a cap at the United Nations talks in Germany, where such a move may have spurred other nations to step up measures against global warming.

“What I have seen so far is speculation in the press, but I haven’t seen China really coming out and saying it,” Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission’s lead envoy at the talks, said in an interview. “It could really unlock the negotiations and show leadership by China. It could be changing the game, depending on the content.”

Found via Climate Progress

[kristopher]

3. Let's see what emerges from the Obama-Xi summit. nt