China said on Tuesday it will set an absolute cap on its CO2 emissions from 2016 just a day after the United States announced new targets for its power sector, signaling a potential breakthrough in tough U.N. climate talks.
Plumer unpacks the news:
If China ever did put a cap on its absolute carbon emissions, that would definitely mark a big policy shift. For now, China has only aimed to restrict its “carbon intensity” — the amount of carbon-dioxide it produces per unit of economic output. That means China’s overall emissions keep growing as the nation’s economy expands. A cap on emissions, by contrast, would require overall emissions to peak.
Also:
It’s not yet guaranteed that China will actually announce a cap. The man who made the announcement — He Jiankun, chairman of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change — is an adviser to the government, but he’s not a government official. So we’ll still have to see if this is the official Chinese government’s position. … More importantly, we don’t yet know the details of this supposed cap. What emissions will get capped? All of them? Some? How stringent will the cap be? Will it be enforceable?
Keating hopes the Chinese follow-through:
The Chinese government and official media often present the U.S. position on emissions as deeply hypocritical. China, after all, still has much lower emissions per capita than the United States, and the U.S. and Europe were able to pollute their way to prosperity in an era before concerns about global warming. Why, the argument goes, should China and other developing countries shoulder the burden for a problem largely created by the West?
This argument, paired with the American aversion to any new emissions rules that won’t also apply to China, creates a perfect feedback loop of inaction, with both countries arguing that the issue is the other side’s problem. While still very preliminary, this week’s news could be an indication that the two countries are starting to break out of the cycle and take some action on their own.
What Andrew Revkin is hearing:
I consulted with The Times’s Beijng bureau. Christopher Buckley, a reporter [based in Hong Kong] who in 2011 had covered China’s emissions plans [and similar pushes from advisers to adopt a cap] while with Reuters, spoke with He Jiankun, who told him repeatedly that he did not in any way speak for the government, or the full expert climate committee. Here’s Buckley’s translation:
It’s not the case that the Chinese government has made any decision. This is a suggestion from experts, because now they are exploring how emissions can be controlled in the 13th Five Year Plan…. This is a view of experts; that’s not saying it’s the government’s. I’m not a government official and I don’t represent the government.
Keith Johnson adds more context:
Beijing’s formal environmental goals are designed to make the economy relatively cleaner but allow overall greenhouse gas emissions to keep rising as the economy keeps growing. The latest official targets, for instance, are meant to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 2015, rather than cutting carbon emissions outright. China is struggling to meet even those lower targets. Meeting these potentially more ambitious ones will be even harder.
The Dish 