China will start cutting its carbon emissions by 2050, its top climate change policymaker was quoted as saying in the Financial Times yesterday, the first time the nation has given a timeframe.
“China’s emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050,” the paper quoted Su Wei, director general of the National Development and Reform Commission’s climate change department, as saying.
TOP SPOT
China competes with the US for the spot as the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases and intense interest is focused on its stance ahead of climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
The December negotiations are aimed at hammering out a new climate change pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
As a developing nation with low per-capita emissions, China is not required to set emissions cuts under the UN Framework on Climate Change, and it has so far also seemed reluctant to accept caps in the future.
COMPROMISE
For the regime that will emerge after 2012, Su seemed to signal a willingness to compromise.
“China will not continue growing emissions without limit or insist that all nations must have the same per-capita emissions. If we did that, this earth would be ruined,” the paper quoted him as saying.
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