China, India and Indonesia must become involved with emissions trading to counter climate change, Ross Garnaut, the Australian government’s adviser on global warming, said yesterday.
“The arithmetic of solving the global problem doesn’t work unless China plays a substantial role from an early date,” Garnaut said on the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s (ABC) Inside Business.
“Eighty percent of the emissions growth over the next couple of decades is going to be in the developing countries,” especially China, India and Indonesia, he said.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whose first act in office was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, wants to show Australia can provide leadership on the environment without jeopardizing 17 years of economic growth. China was the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2004 after the US, the 2007-2008 Human Development Report from the UN Development Program showed.
China plans to use hydropower, nuclear energy, biomass fuels and gas to help reduce 860 million tonnes of greenhouse-gas output by 2010, a National Climate Change Program announced in Beijing in June last year said. China can’t be forced into an emissions trading plan, Garnaut said yesterday. It will only act to join such a program if it sees the developed world doing so, he said.
Australia should “urgently” introduce an emissions trading system to address climate change, Garnaut said on Friday in a draft report on carbon trading plans.
Trading should start with a two-year “transition period” in 2010 to address impacts on the economy, and the government needs to “go further” to cut greenhouse gases 60 percent by 2050, it said.
“Time for Australia is running out,” Rudd told the ABC’s The Insiders yesterday. “We will be very mindful of what business says to us in terms of implementation arrangements. We don’t believe there is a case for delay.”
“What we’re asking this generation of Australians to do is to recognize the costs that have accrued to all of us from the greenhouse gases, the greenhouse pollution we’ve put into the atmosphere over hundreds of years,” Penny Wong, Australian minister for climate change and water, told Channel 10’s Meet the Press yesterday. “We’re asking this generation to take responsibility for at least part of that.”
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CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique