From: Reuters
Published November 7, 2008 08:25 AM
China tells rich polluting nations to change lifestyle
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said rich nations must
abandon their "unsustainable lifestyle" to fight climate change and expand
help to poor nations bearing the brunt of worsening droughts and rising sea
levels.
Wen told the opening of a conference Friday the financial crisis was no
reason for rich nations to delay fighting global warming.
"As the global financial crisis spreads and worsens, and the world
economy slows down apparently, the international community must not waver in
its determination to tackle climate change," Xinhua news agency quoted him
as saying.
The two-day meeting is to push China's call for rich nations to fund a huge
infusion of greenhouse gas-cutting technology for developing countries. But
foreign officials at the meeting raised doubts about Beijing's proposal,
which could stoke contention over who pays and how much.
China is widely believed to be the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the
main greenhouse gas from industry, power plants and vehicles lifting global
temperatures. But Wen threw the onus back on rich nations, with their much
higher emissions per person and long history of polluting the air.
"Developed countries shoulder the duty and responsibility to tackle climate
change and should alter their unsustainable lifestyle," he told the meeting.
Chinese officials have said wealthy nations should divert as much as 1
percent of their economic worth to paying for clean technology transfers and
helping the Third World overcome damage from the rising temperatures
bringing more heatwaves and droughts, more powerful storms and rising sea
levels.
This would mean a total $284 billion a year if members of the Organization
for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) paid up based on the size of
their economies in 2007.
Over 190 nations have agreed to seek a new treaty to curtail greenhouse
gases from industry, vehicles and land-clearing. China wants technology aid
to feature in that pact, which negotiators hope to seal in Copenhagen late
next year.
HOW TO PAY FOR IT?
Climate officials gathered in Beijing welcomed China's growing activism on
the issue but questioned its proposal, especially with an economic downturn
draining coffers.
"It is undeniable that the financial crisis will have an impact on the
climate change negotiations," said Yvo de Boer, who heads the U.N. Climate
Change Secretariat.
"If we go to citizens under the current circumstances ... and say 'I'm
increasing your tax burden in order to pay for climate policy', that might
not go down very well," he told Reuters.
Denmark's Climate Change Minister, Connie Hedegaard, who is helping guide
negotiations leading to Copenhagen, said other governments wanted to see
what China offers in future emissions goals in return for help and big
emissions cuts by rich nations.
Few rich nations have lived up to vows to give a sliver of their GDPs to
development aid, giving little hope for any similar approach to climate
change, she said in an interview.
"I think we will not be able to do this at an adequately big scale unless we
also activate market forces," she said of technology transfers.
But Beijing will wait to see what U.S. President-elect Barack Obamaoffers in
greenhouse gas goals and aid before showing more of its own bargaining
cards, said Hedegaard.
"I definitely believe that behind the scenes things are being prepared and
analysed," she said of China. "But I take it that China, as we all do, will
await the new signals coming out of Washington."
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