An intelligent, straightforward statement of climate change problems facing Australia and China was provided by Professor Ross Garnaut at the East Asia Form blog. It is very much a summary of the main argument of the Garnaut Review – nothing wrong with that - the core proposal of (i) a ‘drift from below’ for developing countries and (ii) a ‘drift from above’ for developed countries towards equal per capita emissions by 2050 sounds like a sensible, practical global policy.
I will start a stay of a month or so in China in a few weeks time and am trying to accumulate some information on Chinese climate policies.
Some earlier posts I have made on this topic include this, this and this.
There is useful information at the Pew Centre website. It contains links to other important material.
Here is an important June 2007 statement from the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission.
This is China’s White Paper: China’s policies and actions on climate change that was released late in 2008 by the State Council Information Office.
This is China’s declared position on the forthcoming Copenhagen climate change conference. That’s the target of the work I wish to do.
Here is some (fairly) vague material on the current state of US-Chinese negotiations.
This is an interesting piece by William Chandler on ‘Breaking the US-China Suicide Pact’ on climate change. Chandler has also compiled this piece on ‘Financing Energy Efficiency in China’.
Here is an impressive overview of the Copenhagen negotiations and the problems these negotiations will face by John Whalley and Sean Walsh. It is subtle – superficially fairly bland but scratching for basics.
This is an interesting piece by reader MikeM (thanks Mike) on the way the Chinese are leading the way in carbon-efficient coal-fired power generation. The piece reminded me of a related recent article I read in the NYT on Chinese leadership of the electric car industry.
The ANU’s Shiro Armstrong put me onto this piece on the East Asia Forum Blog and a very interesting (though short) piece by Youngsheng Zhang on the analytics of the Chinese approach.
This NYT article summarises the current state of negotiations between China and the US.
Excellent articles from Die Spiegel on the Chinese and US policy positions.
I am trying to put some more material together on Chinese (and necessarily US) climate change policy issues over the next week and will add them to this post as I do without comment. Suggestions welcome.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11coal.html
That’s a nice link, thanks.
Harry, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/05/03/dispelling-illusions-on-china-and-climate-change/ also has a view from a well placed researcher at CASS in China.
Also, one of three Chinese proposals for a framework for a global agreement (they all involve a carbon budget and international trading): http://www.anu.edu.au/climatechange/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/12-zhang-australia-china-climate-change-forum.pdf
The other key feature they have in common is that they are all based on production accounting.
Thanks Shiro, these are very useful.
The podcasts and powerpoint presentations on the Australia-China Climate Change Formum website are well worth checking out. Jiahua Pan from CASS, who spoke at the forum, more recently gave an interview to the fairfax press, which was reported in the SMH and the Age. Professor Pan was quite critical of Australia’s proposed 2020 targets.
There are also some reports on bilateral talks between the US and China at Joe Romm’s climate progress blog which may be worth checking out.
Prof Stephen Howes also recently gave a seminar on post-Kyoto proposals from China at http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/seminars.php .
The Chinese carbon budget proposals are probably less generous to high per-capita emitters that contraction and convergence approaches. In his talk Garnaut noted that “at some time during this century, I suggested 2050 but we can discuss the appropriate date, there will need to be a convergence on equal per-capita emissions”. The suggestion from Garnaut and others that a 25% reduction by 2020 on 2000 levels for Australia would be consistent with a stabilisation target of 450 ppm CO2-e is partially based on a convergence date of 2050. A 2050 convergence date would be considered by many low per-capita emitters as quite generous to high per-capita emitters. For this reason, a 25% reduction by Australia would not be considered by developing countries to be sufficient.
Thanks Peter, That’s right because the Garnaut Report was predicated on 450 ppm.
Julian Wong and Andrew Light from the Center for American Progress have a good summary of present Chinese mitigation activities here.
Oops, seems like my link above for the summary of China mitigation did not work. It should be this http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/06/china_energy_numbers.html
The last link is excellent Peter – I’d better get to work now putting some ideas together!