China refuses to cut energy use

By Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent in Montreal
December 3, 2005
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CHINA has underlined the difficulties in forging a new international regime to limit greenhouse gases by declaring that its people barely use enough energy to make a living.

"You cannot live without using energy," Sun Guoshun, director of the Department of Treaty and Law at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Associated Press.

He said it was unfair to expect China and India, with millions of people in poverty and without access to reliable power supplies, to cut back on energy consumption.

Mr Sun also said it was a pity that the United States, the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, had not agreed to reduce its emissions, noting that per head of population the US produced more than seven times the greenhouse gases China did.

The exclusion of large and rapidly growing India and China is one of the chief reasons the US has cited for not signing the Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrial countries to reduce carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. Australia is the only other industrialised nation to have refused to ratify the protocol.

China and the US have essentially the same policy towards global warming. The two largest emitters, they both put prosperity ahead of environmental concerns, and both emphasise efficiency measures of greenhouse gas production rather than the absolute amounts.

Mr Sun said China had set a goal of increasing energy efficiency by 20 per cent between 2006 and 2010, while President George Bush aims to reduce greenhouse gas production by 18 per cent as measured against gross domestic product.

Trying to slow global warming without limiting economic growth is one of the central problems facing delegates in Montreal this week at the first climate change conference since the Kyoto Protocol came into effect in February this year.

The worst performer in the industrialised world is the host of the conference, Canada, where greenhouse gas production has risen 57.5 per cent since 1990. It was a positively balmy 16 degrees in Montreal this week, 15 degrees above average.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/china-refuses-to-cut-energy-use/2005/12...