China hit back yesterday at US claims it was shirking the fight against climate change, likening criticisms from the administration of US President Barack Obama’s top climate envoy to a pig preening itself in a mirror.
Su Wei (蘇偉), a senior Chinese climate change negotiator, rejected comments from US climate envoy Todd Stern as a week of UN talks on fighting climate change drew to a close in Tianjin.
Stern, in remarks at a US university, said Beijing could not insist rich nations take on fixed targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions while China and other big emerging nations adopt only voluntary domestic goals.
Su countered that Stern’s claims were a diversion from the US’ failure to make big cuts in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases causing global warming. China is the world’s top greenhouse gas polluter after the US.
“In fact, it amounts to doing nothing themselves and then shirking responsibility. They want to place the blame on China and other developing countries,” Su said.
The UN says there is little time to agree on the outlines of a broader climate pact that binds all big carbon emitting nations and to prevent dangerous climate change, such as greater extremes of droughts, floods and storms.
The first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and what follows from 2013 is under contention.
Greens say the Tianjin talks made progress on a future climate fund to help poorer nations adapt to global warming and to green their economies. However, anger over rich nations’ carbon pledges, particularly the US, soured the mood.
The US Senate is struggling to approve a pledge to cut emissions by about 4 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, a long way from the size of cuts other Western governments have pledged.
Su likened the US criticism to Zhubajie (豬八戒), a pig character in the Chinese novel Journey to the West, which in a traditional saying preens itself in a mirror.
“It has no measures or actions to show for itself, and instead it criticizes China, which is actively taking measures and actions,” Su said of the US.
The jabs between Beijing and Washington expose a rift that has unsettled the talks: to what extent China — the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter — should still be viewed in treaties as an emerging economy free of fixed greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Negotiators in Tianjin began the talks a week ago to firm up trust-building steps to pave the way for high-level talks in Cancun, Mexico, in less than two months and meetings next year to create a broader, legally binding climate deal.
Nearly 200 governments failed to agree last December on a new legally binding deal. That meeting in Copenhagen ended in sniping between rich and developing countries.
Stern accused Beijing of sliding away from the Copenhagen Accord and said that agreement established that China should be treated much like other big polluters.
The top US negotiator in Tianjin, Jonathan Pershing, said he was disappointed by the resistance of China and other developing nations to a major issue: Allowing the monitoring and verification of their efforts to curb the greenhouse gas emissions.
“We have made very little progress on the key issue that confronts us,” he said. “These elements are a part of the deal.”
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