China defends role in climate change
BEIJING—China insisted that developed countries were chiefly responsible for global warming, saying Wednesday that critics of the country's soaring emission levels must also factor in its massive population.
"Climate change is mainly attributable to long-term emissions by developed countries in the past and their current high per capital levels of emissions," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters at the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's legislature.
"The emissions of three Chinese are less than that of one person in developed countries. That is like one person who eats three slices of bread for breakfast, and three people, each of them eats one slice. Who should be on a diet?" Yang said.
However, Yang reiterated Beijing's support for an international agreement reached in Bali, Indonesia, last year on fighting climate change.
"Let me emphasize that China welcomes the 'Bali Roadmap.' China has made every effort to combat climate change. We will continue to make even greater efforts in a responsible manner," he said.
The roadmap is intended to lead to a more inclusive, effective successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which commits 37 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent between 2008 and 2012.
China and other developing countries, such as India, say their economies should not be penalized by binding cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases when their per capita emissions are much below those in developed countries.
"If per capita energy consumption is viewed ... then I don't think some people are justified in talking about large emissions from China as if they have a moral high ground," Yang said.
Yang spoke a day after a report released in California said the growth in China's carbon dioxide emissions was far outpacing previous estimates. China's projected annual increase in emissions was greater than the total now produced each year by either Great Britain or Germany, said the report by economists from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at San Diego.
"It had been expected that the efficiency of China's power generation would continue to improve as per capita income increased, slowing down the rate of CO2 emissions growth. What we're finding instead is that the emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations," said Maximillian Auffhammer, a Berkeley professor and one of the authors of the report.
