With Billions at Stake, China—Yes, China—Calls for a Better Kyoto Protocol (Treehugger.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

October 31, 2006 2:10 PM - Alex Pasternack, Beijing, China

As Australia’s government insists today that any commitment it would make to the Kyoto protocol would mean nothing without the participation of major carbon culprits like China, Beijing made its own noise about the emissions framework last week, calling for a new and improved agreement after the current Kyoto end date of 2012.

China, like India, is not a signer of the pact, since it claims that emissions restrictions would unfairly limit its development. “You cannot tell people who are struggling to earn enough to eat that they need to reduce their emissions,” said Lu Xuedu, deputy director at China's Office of Global Environmental Affairs, at the first Carbon Expo Asia, a trade fair held in Beijing last week. But since hundreds of millions of dollars in investments in China’s renewable energy industry depend upon Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)—which allows big-polluting developed countries to invest in cheaper emissions cuts in developing countries—Beijing officials and industry leaders want assurances that Kyoto will continue.

Just how many greenbacks are at stake for developing countries? Three billion next year, writes Karan Capoor of the World Bank. Meanwhile, Capoor estimates that the volume of the carbon trading market is nearly $22 billion, which “is four times the GDP of Mongolia and more than twice the GDP of Laos, and the year is not even over.”

While hordes of businessmen sought a piece of the lucrative emissions reduction pie at Asia’s first carbon market trade fair last weekend, Chinese officials sounded a call for an even stricter version of Kyoto by 2008: "We hope that by 2008, or at the latest 2009, we can reach an agreement, but it is not something that the Chinese government can resolve alone," said Gao Guangsheng, director general of the office of the National Coordination Committee for Climate Change.

Su Wei, Deputy Director of the Department of Treaty and Law at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that China wants targets for the next Kyoto period that are at least as tough, if not stricter, than current levels, which are a 5.2 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period. Su also asked for a long commitment period. “It should not be shorter than five years...and it might be suitable for it to last 8 to 10 years,” he told conference attendees.
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more: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/10/with_billions_a.php

[lapfog_1]

1. Gore spent a lot of time in china talking to the leaders there

The Chinese are long term planners, much more so than anyone in the west. Maybe this is the result.
After all, this will affect China even more than North America.

[Igel]

2. Of course. China's always looking out for China's interests.

Stricter emissions controls = more investment in China.

I'm willing to bet (a gummy worm or two) that China still will argue that they should only be the beneficiary of a revised/extended protocol, and not be subject to it.