Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

[Ali_R]

Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it’s War on the Environment

BALI, Indonesia – China would take an active and cooperative attitude to make its contributions to climate protection, said Su Wei, deputy head of the Chinese delegation to the two-week UN climate change conference that concluded on Saturday after adopting a roadmap for negotiations for a new treaty.
The climate conference adopted on Saturday a plan to negotiate a new global warming pact, after the United States suddenly reversed its opposition to a call by developing nations for technological help to battle rising temperatures.
Upcoming talks, to be completed in 2009, may help determine for years to come how well the world can control climate change, and how severe the consequences of global warming will be.
“China is making its efforts to cut its energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent from 2006 to 2010. The green efforts also need to be implemented in a verifiable way,” he said in a response to the roadmap requirement that developing countries should mitigate climate change in a measurable, reportable and verifiable way.
But Chen Dongmei, director of Climate Change and Energy Program of WWF China, said how to make it verifiable is a challenge for the country’s current capacity-building in mitigating climate change.
The US initial opposition to support developing countries in technology, financing and capability-building in a “measurable, reportable and verifiable” way had drawn loud boos and sharp rebukes.
A delegate from Papua New Guinea said: “If you (the US) are not willing to take the lead, get out of the way!”
And the delegate from South Africa strongly recommended the US to reconsider their commitment.
“I have attended the UN climate change conferences in the past four years. I have never seen such a strong push on the US from the international community,” Yu Jie, adviser of China Program of Heinrich Boell Foundation based in Berlin, told China Daily.
Su Wei, deputy head of the Chinese delegation to the conference, said: “If compared the roadmap to a bus, I am glad that finally we have the US to be one of the passengers. Now we can go ahead.”
But Christopher Miller, climate campaigner from Greenpeace America, said that although the US has become a passenger, it only buys a developing-country ticket, criticizing the US for shouldering less responsibility.
New global warming pact in sight, China cooperative

After some harsh words and lots of “boos” from the other countries, the US delegation turns 180 degrees. Funny, lets hope we will not see another turn by USA sooner or later on global warming pacts.