Australia said yesterday it will press ahead with plans to urge Pacific Rim countries -- including China and other big developing-world polluters -- to agree that limiting greenhouse gas emissions should be part of a new international pact on global warming.
Familiar fault lines emerged between developed and developing countries on an Australian plan for the APEC forum to reach consensus on a new approach to climate change.
China and other countries suspect that the Australian proposal, which is backed by the US, might compel them to accept targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Asian diplomats said.
Australia and the US, the only two industrialized nations to have rejected the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, argue that an agreement that requires rich countries to cap emissions but allows looser rules for developing nations is unfair.
As officials planned meetings yesterday to work on a climate change statement for APEC leaders to adopt at their weekend summit, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said a new international framework on the issue cannot leave out the biggest polluters.
"We will be pressing for a commitment by all APEC economies to the key elements of a genuinely global response to climate change," Downer said.
"Australia would like to see the APEC leaders agree for the first time that a new international agreement should include an agreed long-term aspirational goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
Downer said APEC economies, which include the world's three largest polluters in the US, China and Russia, account for 60 percent of global energy demand and pump out about the same share of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
"APEC members have an opportunity in Sydney in a few days time to help shape the global response to climate change at a crucial time," Downer said.
An APEC declaration on climate change is not expected to include any specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Also see:
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China is mischaracterizing UN Resolution 2758 for its own interests by conflating it with its “one China” principle, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert said on Monday. Speaking at a seminar held by the German Marshall Fund, Lambert called for support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community at a time when China is increasingly misusing Resolution 2758. The resolution had a clear impact when it changed who occupied the China seat at the UN, Lambert said. “Today, however, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] increasingly mischaracterizes and misuses Resolution 2758 to serve its own interests,” Lambert said. “Beijing