Another round of U.N. climate talks closed without resolving how to share the burden of curbing man-made global warming, mainly because countries don’t agree on who is rich and who is poor.
China wants to maintain a decades-old division between developed and developing countries, bearing in mind that, historically, the West has released most of the heat-trapping gases that scientists say could cause catastrophic changes in climate.
But the U.S. and Europe insisted during the two-week talks that ended Friday in Bonn that the system doesn’t reflect current economic realities and must change as work begins on a new global climate pact set to be completed in 2015.
“The notion that a simple binary system is going to be applicable going forward is no longer one that has much relevance to the way the world currently works,” U.S. chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing said.
Countries like Qatar and Singapore are wealthier than the U.S. per capita but are still defined as developing countries under the classification used in the U.N. talks. So is China, the world’s second largest economy.
Finding a new system that better reflects the world today, while also acknowledging the historical blame for greenhouse gas emissions, is the biggest challenge facing the U.N. process as it seeks a global response to climate change.
“That is a fundamental issue,” said Henrik Harboe, Norway’s chief climate negotiator. “Some want to keep the old division while we want to look at it in a more dynamic way.”
If China is poor why can they buy USA debt directly from the US treasury instead of going through Wallstreet like the rest of the world?
China, which holds $1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, still buys some Treasuries through primary dealers, but since June 2011, that route hasn’t been necessary.
The documents viewed by Reuters show the U.S. Treasury Department has given the People’s Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which the Chinese first used to buy two-year notes in late June 2011.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-usa-treasuries-china-idUSBRE84K11720120521
China wants food security and a modern economy. For the green Left, these are evil things and must be prevented. Hence, China must be beaten into submission with the CO2 bat as a matter of some urgency, given its size and recent success.
Ralph, the US needs someone to massively buy its debt, an that takes a massive economy. So the preferred buyer will be either the European Union, or China. When the US sells its debt, the US gets stuck holding the currency it got in exchange. Would you rather have Euros, or yuan? The Euro is heading into the toilet, so you don’t want to own Euros. You want the alternative to Euros.
This means that the US has a strong incentive to help China maintain the value of its currency — because now, it’s *our* currency, too.
Another nasty bit: the US currency is heading into the toilet, too. Our debt-to-GDP situation is as bad as what Greece has. So the US doesn’t really want Dollars, either. If you don’t want dollars and would rather have yuan, what do you do? Trade your dollars for yuan and do what you can to make the yuan a good currency to have.
This means that for the US, it’s very important that China not be caught up in boondoggles that restrict its CO2 emissions. Of course, it’s important for China, too.
Please excuse the sermon.
China is considered a rich country, by far richer than any European country, by Adam Smith in his famous book The Wealth Of Nations. That book was published in 1776.