Breaking the U.S.-China suicide pact

William Chandler's recommendations on how we can cooperate to lower emissions

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 11:31 AM on 28 Mar 2008

William Chandler, director of the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program, has borrowed my phrase for the title of his new study: "Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change." It begins:

Together, China and the United States produce 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their actions to curb or expand energy consumption will determine whether efforts to stop global climate change succeed or fail. If these two nations act to curb emissions, the rest of the world can more easily coalesce on a global plan. If either fails to act, the mitigation strategies adopted by the rest of the world will fall far short of averting disaster for large parts of the earth.

These two nations are now joined in what energy analyst Joe Romm has aptly called "a mutual suicide pact." American leaders point to emissions growth in China and demand that Chinese leaders take responsibility for climate change. Chinese leaders counter that American per capita greenhouse gas emissions are five times theirs and say, "You created this problem, you do something about it."

Great factoid from the report:

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the United States has produced 1,150 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels, compared to China's 310 billion tons.

Key recommendations for U.S.-China cooperation:

Eliminate subsidies that discourage energy efficiency.
Provide tax breaks for investment in efficiency and low-carbon energy and impose tax penalties on high-carbon energy.
Make climate cooperation integral to trade policy, such as jointly setting production standards to limit the energy used to manufacture exports.
Create partnerships between Chinese provincial officials and leaders in U.S. states on the forefront of climate change prevention to improve implementation of innovative energy policies.
Promote market penetration of existing carbon emission reduction technologies and encourage development of new technologies by linking American laboratories more closely to Chinese markets to share research and development costs.
Encourage banks in China to remove the regulatory cap on interest rates for energy-efficiency investments.

Definitely worth a read for those interested in the vexing suicide pact.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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Shot ourselves in the foot

We created the growth in China that is driving up the demand on oil, coal and other energies.

The Chinese spent millions here to get most favored nation status and to get in the W.T.O. Our corpocracy was more than willing to sell out to Chinese interest for he promise of cheap labor and another market to sell in. The Chinese have not delivered on the later yet.

We spent trillions defeating the old Communist USSR and can't trade with Cuba because they are communsist. We then allow our corporate run government to enter into an arrangement that is wiping out the middle class in this country and Wal-Mart is funding a military that will hand us our heads on a plate one of these days. The also us a large part of that money to buy up oil reserves all over the world and are in direct competition with us now in the middle east.

They don't even use the term communist chinese anymore and don't want to talk about how China got most favored nation trading status. Our Corporate government caused the present oil crises, the food shortages, the extra pollution and the present and future energy wars.

China can't sustain a 10% increase in growth each year and an added 8% increase in oil imports for much longer. They as us have stated that they will protect their interest in the middle east and are building a navy that rivals if not over matches ours. Its going to be interesting when the 5th fleet and the chinese navy is floating around together in that bath tub sized body of water in the middle east.

I will leave India for someone else to ponder but they are a big part of the equation and the oil siphon we created also.

We should not have been using 25% of the worlds oil ourselves and creating 25% of the pollution but we just exacerbated the problem by letting corporations take control of our government and create this monster. Someone tell me how most favored nation trading status with the Chinese was a good idea plus our helping then into the WTO.

I am not an economist, I may have missed something here.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

by Pompey Road at 7:28 AM on 29 Mar 2008

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