Climate’s elephant in the room – John Elkington and Jodie Thorpe

From Chinadialogue:

“China and India, for various reasons, have been blowing hot and cold as they talk about tackling climate change, but both want accelerated transfers of clean technology to their emerging economies.”

The “elephant in the bedroom” is a phrase used to describe a problem that is looming large, but is too overwhelming to be engaged”and is therefore ignored. As the climate change debate goes into overdrive, one elephant in the global bedroom is China. The rate of growth in China’s energy demand is so intense that it threatens to wipe out much of what the rest of the world does. At the same time, however, there are those who predict that China, because its problems are likely to become so severe, will become an incubator for solutions that can be applied worldwide.

Such issues were part of the backdrop to the recent G8+5 meeting in Washington, D.C., which was focused on climate change. On 16 February, delegates agreed that developing countries, as well as rich countries, would have to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue was set up in the wake of the failure of UN negotiations in December to agree a timetable for forcing new cuts in emissions when the current Kyoto targets expire in 2012. In addition to the G8 nations, the two-day meeting attracted legislators from China and from Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa. One part of the agreement was that a global market should be formed to “cap and trade” carbon dioxide emissions. [Full Text]

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