Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, on Tuesday warned China that the European Union could penalise cheap imports from high carbon-emitting countries in order to defend EU companies obliged to meet strict environmental standards.

In a speech to students at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, Mr Sarkozy urged China to shoulder its environmental responsibilities as a global economic power that energy experts predict will soon emerge as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.

He delivered his speech a week before negotiators from 191 countries meet in Bali for talks on a successor to the Kyoto treaty on climate change. China is expected to play a leading role in the negotiations.

Mr Sarkozy, alluding to the EU’s informal goal of halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, said such targets were essential in order to avert a planetary catastrophe.

“We cannot have one response from Europe and one from Asia, one from the north and one from the south,” he said. “China can and must play its full part.”

But he said the EU, which regards itself as the world’s pace-setter in fighting climate change, would not indefinitely let its companies bear the brunt of this campaign if countries that mass-produced cheaper goods delayed adopting similar standards.

“I will defend the principle of a carbon compensation mechanism at the EU’s borders with regard to countries that don’t put in place rules for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr Sarkozy said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21993302/

Rich countries responsible for most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions should take the lead on climate change, a commentary in China’s state media said on Tuesday, a week before the opening of global talks on the issue.

China is set to surpass the United States as the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide, the main gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, but has resisted pressure to agree to caps or specific targets on its emissions.

The commentary said that from the Industrial Revolution until the 1950s, the developed world was responsible for 95 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and accounted 77 percent of the world’s total from 1950 to 2000.

“Their present per-capita rate of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions still far exceeds that of developing countries,” said the commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece.

“Therefore, on the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, who should bear heavier responsibility goes without saying.”
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45564/story.htm

THE WEST’S NEW GREENNESS CONCEALS A GIANT PROTECTIONIST RACKET

One doesn’t have to deny, or even question, the science of global warming to come to the conclusion that the West’s policy on global warming is rapidly evolving into a giant protectionist racket against the developing world.

When the Kyoto treaty was signed in 1997, developing nations were exempt from targets obliging them to cut their carbon emissions. The argument for excluding them was thoroughly logical: their per-capita carbon emissions were only a fraction of those of the developed world. It was the duty of the rich nations to set an example in cutting their own emissions before any targets were imposed on developing nations.

Since 1997, Western efforts to cut carbon emissions have come to almost naught. US carbon emissions are now 15 per cent higher than they were in 1990 — the baseline level used for all Kyoto targets. Japan’s emissions have risen by 11 per cent. While EU carbon emissions have fallen by 2.9 per cent, overall greenhouse gas emissions have risen. Yet in spite of this record of non-achievement the West is increasingly hectoring the developing world on its carbon emissions. How about this remark from Tony Blair in Johannesburg in May: ‘If we shut down the whole of Britain and emitted nothing, within two years the growth of China’s emissions would make up the difference. They are building a coal-fired power station every four days. They are, I think, about to build 70 major airports. One thing the wealthy world can’t say is, “You can’t grow.” But, on the other hand, one thing I think is really absurd if we want to tackle climate change, is if the world’s largest emitters are not part of the deal.’ In other words, it isn’t us with our Chrysler Voyagers and long-haul holidays to Florida who are to blame for global warming, it is all those pesky Chinamen with their woks and their electrical sewing machines.

The International Energy Agency recently made the prediction that China’s carbon emissions would overtake America’s by 2009. That may or may not happen, but even if it does, it doesn’t quite mean that the Chinese are as culpable as Americans for carbon emissions, because it rather ignores the fact that China has five times the population. Head for head, in 2003 the Chinese emitted 3.2 tonnes of carbon and India 1.19 tonnes. The US, on the other hand, emitted 19.8 tonnes of carbon per capita. The UK emitted 9.4 tonnes, Germany 9.8 tonnes and France, which has a high proportion of energy generated by nuclear power, 6.4 tonnes. But even those figures are highly misleading, because they ignore the fact that much of China’s rising carbon emissions are being spewed out in the name of producing goods for Western consumers. These are emissions, of course, which used to come from chimneys in Birmingham and Manchester, before our manufacturing base was reduced to a shadow of what it was. If Britain meets its Kyoto target in 2012 (and it may well do), it won’t be because British consumers have made sacrifices to save the planet; it will be because we, like other Western nations, have exported a sizeable proportion of our carbon emissions to China.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/77571/the-west-is-running-a-protectionist-racket-against-the-developing-world.thtml