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Buried in the text of Tuesday's joint declaration between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao was a hopeful clause about climate talks: The Obama administration is likely to offer emission-reduction targets at next month's climate summit, as long as the Chinese offer a proposal of their own.
U.S. reluctance to set a short-term emissions goal has been a sticking point in the U.N.-sponsored talks for nearly a year. Almost all industrialized nations, and many developing countries, have announced plans to curb their greenhouse-gas output by 2020. Neither the United States nor China -- which is not obligated to do so under the U.N. framework, even though it ranks as the world's biggest emitter -- has done so, thereby hampering the prospects of an agreement.
A senior administration official said any U.S. target would require congressional action. Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said that would not happen until spring. The House-passed climate bill includes a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 compared with 2005 levels; the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee backed a 20 percent cut, but key senators vowed to make that less ambitious.
This past weekend, the Obama administration endorsed a Danish proposal to settle for a political accord on global warming in Copenhagen next month, while deferring to 2010 the codification of a legally binding international treaty. According to the joint declaration, "an agreed outcome at Copenhagen should . . . include emission reduction targets of developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries."
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Michael Levi, a senior fellow on environmental and energy issues at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S.-China declaration "has moved expectations up a bit for Copenhagen."
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Source: Washington Post
