U.S. and China Make Landmark Climate Deal

An anonymous reader writes: After extended talks on the issue of climate change, the U.S. and China have reached a landmark accord to curb emissions in the near future. The two countries are the top carbon polluters, so their actions are likely to have a major effect on world pollution levels and also set the standard for other countries. The agreement includes China's first-ever commitment to stop the growth of its emissions by 2030. They plan on shifting a big chunk of their energy production to renewables in that time. The U.S. agreed to emit 26-28% less carbon in 2025 than it did in 2005. Their efforts could spur greater enthusiasm for a new global climate agreement in 2015. Reader jones_supa adds details of another interesting part of the U.S.-China talks: Technology products look likely to gain more access to international markets as a result of upgrade between the U.S. and China on a 1996 tariff-eliminating trade agreement that President Obama announced Tuesday in Beijing. The agreement is expected to lower prices on a raft of new technology products by eliminating border tariffs — a price impact that's expected to be larger outside the United States, since U.S. tariffs on high-tech goods are generally lower than those overseas. "This is a win-win-win agreement for information and communication technology industries in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China, for businesses and consumers who purchase IT products and for the global economy."

Comments

Ya...Right

[sycodon]

Everyone who believes China will uphold their end of the deal, raise your hand.

Thought so.

I wonder where Obama is going to plant those magic beans he just bought.

Re:Ya...Right

[Anonymous Coward]

All the while, China will continue to open a coal plane every week until 2030. Yup, the great negotiator. Thanks for the help Obama.

Re:Ya...Right

[AmiMoJo]

The same could be argued of the US. It just ignores agreements and treaties when it suits itself. Pretending that China is any worse is just borderline racism.

China has demonstrated a willingness to clean up in the past. For example, the EU introduced RoHS and China adopted it because the EU is a major customer. That's the sort of agreement that will work - a requirement to meet certain standards in order to sell stuff into a huge market.

Re:Ya...Right

[i kan reed]

And it ignores that relatively basic notion that treaties of this sort tend to have binding requirements that actually allow for trade-based disincentives for breaking them.

China doesn't want increased trade tariffs as a penalty to violating the treaty. Oh, sure they'll fudge their official numbers to look like they're in compliance when they're not sometimes, but that's just how laws influence behavior anyways.

Re:Ya...Right

[WindBourne]

And yet, America has met the terms of the Kyoto agreement. Just because we did not ratify it, does not mean that we did not actually honor it.

Quite the poker player

[argStyopa]

So China promises to stop increasing by 2030, and the US promises to cut ~26% by 2025.

That's powerful negotiation right there. I wish I were discussing my next raise with this administration.

Re:Quite the poker player

[jratcliffe]

China's producing 7.2 tons per person. The US is producing 16.5 tons per person.
http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

The US is committing to cutting its emissions to 14.1 tons per person (down 27% from 19.3 in 2005). That's still 2x China's current level. Why on earth would China agree to forever have half the emissions per capita of the US?

Re:Quite the poker player

[jratcliffe]

Note that if AGW is NOT an existential threat, it's probably not important to bother with landmark agreements that won't accomplish anything meaningful anyway.

So, we should never have any international treaties about anything that's not an existential threat? Got it. Let's dump that pesky Geneva Convention, the human race will survive whether or not prisoners are tortured. Let's also drop those treaties around the use of space - if we end up with satellites in the same orbital slot, interfering with each other's signals, it won't result in the end of the human race.

Ever consider that something that's not absolutely perfect in every possible way could still be an improvement over the status quo? A car doesn't get you from point A to point B instantly, does that mean we should just walk everywhere? Of course not.

Re:Quite the poker player

[Misagon]

Those are silly numbers because they are only measurements of domestic emissions.
Around half of China's carbon emissions are because of productions of goods that are exported to mainly USA and the EU. You could say that while USA and EU are importing from China, they are exporting their emissions to China.
If you take that into account, USA and EU are much worse per capita.

I am in Sweden, which has one of the strongest economies in the EU, having got mostly unscathed out of the recent Euro crisis (Sweden still has its own currency).
Sweden has one of the lowest carbon emissions per capita in the EU, but because the economy is so strong, Swedish citizens are spending more money on imported goods than other EU citizens and are therefore among the worst polluters in the EU if you take trade into account.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The republican solution to fixing everything is to make it cheaper for business, particularly big business, by levelling the playing field with places like China, completely ignoring that we would then be marinating in our own pollution and likely lowering our standard of living even further to do so. Still, it has been seen time and time again that you can get people to vote against their best interest if you spend enough money on it.

My own solution to try to equalize things a bit is to start to gradually tariff/tax things that are made with less rigid standards in the United States. For instance, if an Iphone is made with working conditions we would not tolerate and a lot of pollution is created in the process then we tariff that enough so that it is possible for the US to compete. Similarly things like coal plants that likely cause a lot of secondary health problems, particularly if they don't have up to date technology, should have to pay for the external health costs. That way cleaner tech can fairly compete. Society as a whole pays the total bill. It makes no sense to save money one place only to be forced to spend a total amount that is greater.