Sino-American Climate Deal?

[jimmy olsen]

Won't the congress just torpedo this?

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/major-milestone-u-s-china-announce-climate-breakthrough-n246636

The U.S. and China, which together account for more than a third of all of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, have negotiated a sweeping agreement to cut emissions drastically by 2030, a deal that President Barack Obama called a "major milestone" Wednesday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing.

The White House said the U.S. would seek by 2025 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below a baseline level from 2005. At the same time, China said it intended to begin reversing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2030 and to increase the share of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission power to 20 percent of all of its energy consumption by that year.

At a joint news conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Obama said he hoped the deal — the first time China has ever agreed to "peak" its carbon emissions — would jump-start negotiations with an eye toward reaching a worldwide climate agreement in Paris next year.

"We have a special responsibility to lead the world effort to combat global climate change," Obama said. "We hope to encourage all major economies to be ambitious."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated Obama and Xi for "an important contribution to the new climate agreement to be reached in Paris next year."

"The joint announcement signals that the transition towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient future is accelerating," Ban said.

To an extent, the two world superpowers are playing catchup. The European Union earlier this year pledged to cut its emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

On the U.S. side, the agreement would double the pace of carbon reduction from 1.2 percent a year through 2020 to 2.3 percent to 2.8 percent a year afterward. The White House said that ambitious target could be met under existing laws and that it would generate as much as $93 billion in "net benefits" from improved public health and reduced pollution.

As for China, Beijing's targets represent "a serious commitment to finally shift the Chinese economy away from coal," said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit public policy institute.

The U.S. and China, which together account for more than a third of all of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, have negotiated a sweeping agreement to cut emissions drastically by 2030, a deal that President Barack Obama called a "major milestone" Wednesday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing.

The White House said the U.S. would seek by 2025 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below a baseline level from 2005. At the same time, China said it intended to begin reversing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2030 and to increase the share of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission power to 20 percent of all of its energy consumption by that year.

At a joint news conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Obama said he hoped the deal — the first time China has ever agreed to "peak" its carbon emissions — would jump-start negotiations with an eye toward reaching a worldwide climate agreement in Paris next year.

"We have a special responsibility to lead the world effort to combat global climate change," Obama said. "We hope to encourage all major economies to be ambitious."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated Obama and Xi for "an important contribution to the new climate agreement to be reached in Paris next year."

"The joint announcement signals that the transition towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient future is accelerating," Ban said.

To an extent, the two world superpowers are playing catchup. The European Union earlier this year pledged to cut its emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

On the U.S. side, the agreement would double the pace of carbon reduction from 1.2 percent a year through 2020 to 2.3 percent to 2.8 percent a year afterward. The White House said that ambitious target could be met under existing laws and that it would generate as much as $93 billion in "net benefits" from improved public health and reduced pollution.

As for China, Beijing's targets represent "a serious commitment to finally shift the Chinese economy away from coal," said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit public policy institute.

[Monoriu]

I think China is doing this not to combat global warming, but to manage public expectations.  The air pollution in China has reached horrific and embarrassing levels.  It is a public and daily reminder about the disregard of public health and incompetence and corruption of officials.  Since they are doing it anyway, may as well sell it to the Americans too to improve the cost/benefit ratio.

[derspiess]

I think China is doing this not to combat global warming, but to manage public expectations.

Somehow I initially read this as "public executions" 

[The Minsky Moment]

Won't the congress just torpedo this?

Either way it's a win for Obama
By making the deal with PRC he eliminates the argument that warming is real but it is pointless to act because the Chinese won't cooperate.
That leaves the denies to take up the charge.  Which makes Congress look beholden to the nutbar caucus.

[Josquius]

Won't the congress just torpedo this?

If they do then I hope Obama  comes out with a "Why do I even fucking bother" speech.

[Eddie Teach]

Either way it's a win for Obama
By making the deal with PRC he eliminates the argument that warming is real but it is pointless to act because the Chinese won't cooperate.

Eh, that argument will still have a lot of traction.

The White House said the U.S. would seek by 2025 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below a baseline level from 2005. At the same time, China said it intended to begin reversing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2030 and to increase the share of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission power to 20 percent of all of its energy consumption by that year.

We agree to cut ours, they agree to stop growing theirs 15 years from now.

[citizen k]

With Boehner and McConnell already out blasting Obama's headline-grabbing emissions-deal with China...

   
• *OBAMA INTENDS TO 'DOUBLE DOWN' ON JOB-CRUSHING POLICIES:BOEHNER
• *OBAMA ANNOUNCEMENT 'CRUSADE' AGAINST AFFORDABLE ENERGY: BOEHNER
• *MCCONNELL SAYS OBAMA EMISSIONS TARGET 'UNREALISTIC'

We thought a look at the 'faux reality' of the agreement would help clarify the farce: In the "historic" U.S.-China climate agreement this week, Beijing simply reiterated previously announced targets.
Authored by Zachary Zeck, originally posted at The Diplomat,
<blockquote>The big headline coming out of the second summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama is a climate agreement the two sides reached about cutting carbon emissions in the coming decades. News stories have used sweeping language like the "historic climate change agreement" to describe the deal.

This seems to greatly exaggerate the significance of the deal, at least from the perspective of China. In fact, in the agreement Beijing simply reiterates commitments it had previously announced.

According to the White House, the agreement states that "The United States intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030."

As numerous news accounts have pointed out, this means the U.S. will cut its emissions at a significantly faster rate than it had previously announced. According to the New York Times, under the new deal the U.S. will "double the pace of reduction it targeted for the period from 2005 to 2020."

This is unimpressive compared to the commitments China made, according to the same article. "China's pledge to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, if not sooner, is even more remarkable. To reach that goal, Mr. Xi pledged that so-called clean energy sources, like solar power and windmills, would account for 20 percent of China's total energy production by 2030," the NYT article stated.

Actually, China does not appear to have committed itself to anything new in the agreement. Indeed, following an Obama speech on U.S. climate policy back in June, China outlined its own future emissions policy. Specifically, He Jiankun, chairman of China's Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference in Beijing that China would set an absolute cap on its CO2 emissions when it released its next five year plan in 2016. He refused, however, to say what that cap would be.

Further tempering expectations, Reuters paraphrased He as saying at the time that "China's greenhouse gas emissions would only peak in 2030, at around 11 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent." China's emissions are currently around 7-9.5 billion tonnes. Reuters also reported that He said to achieve this goal, "The share of non-fossil fuels in China's energy mix would reach 20 to 25 percent in 2030."

To be clear, He later tried to walk back his comments in an interview with the South China Morning Post, stating, "This is still a proposal made by Chinese experts after extensive research, [but is] not yet a government decision." Still, it would be extremely uncharacteristic for a Chinese official to announce specific targets unless something very close to a decision had already been made.

In that sense, the new deal hardly seems less like a landmark agreement and more like China reiterating what it had already announced, while Obama uses Beijing's commitments as cover to accelerate America's emissions reductions. To be fair, however, the New York Times article quoted above did report that the deal was "worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach." Thus, it is possible (though seemingly unlikely) that negotiations with the U.S. is what spurred Beijing to set these targets in the first place, and the agreement was just reached five months in advance.

Still, at the very least, the agreement announced this week provided little new information about China's climate policy.
  *  *  *
  </blockquote> So Obama folded, the Chinese didn't move, and Republicans are not impressed.

[CountDeMoney]

Just Kyoto-lite:  looks good, means nothing.  With the added benefit of sucking Chinese dick.

[Siege]

Don't the plants and plankton consume the co2 during photosynthesis and create oxygen?

[CountDeMoney]

It's food for trees.

[Eddie Teach]

Don't the plants and plankton consume the co2 during photosynthesis and create oxygen?

Yeah, we just don't have enough of them to offset.

[The Minsky Moment]

We agree to cut ours, they agree to stop growing theirs 15 years from now.

US per capita emissions are 3 times as high so that is actually quite reasonable.

[derspiess]

Don't the plants and plankton consume the co2 during photosynthesis and create oxygen?

Yeah, we just don't have enough of them to offset.

I'd be happy to sell CO2 offsets to anyone interested

[Eddie Teach]

We agree to cut ours, they agree to stop growing theirs 15 years from now.

US per capita emissions are 3 times as high so that is actually quite reasonable.

Perhaps so, but will that matter to the typical American voter?

And if our per capita emissions are only 3 times as high, their total is already higher. So allowing it to grow further doesn't bode well for trying to stop global warming.

[Barrister]

We agree to cut ours, they agree to stop growing theirs 15 years from now.

US per capita emissions are 3 times as high so that is actually quite reasonable.

Perhaps so, but will that matter to the typical American voter?

And if our per capita emissions are only 3 times as high, their total is already higher. So allowing it to grow further doesn't bode well for trying to stop global warming.

But on a certain level you can understand the Chinese position.  They do not want to "lock in" their lower level of development by promising to never consume as much power as the developed world.