The Chinese leadership strikes me as pragmatic. If they thought the harm from Global Warming would be more costly than carbon emission cuts, they would make them.

But neither China nor India wants to remain poor. Any poor country is likely to benefit much more from development than the harm development will cause through additional carbon emissions (unless it's the Maldives). And neither countries' regimes can benefit from buying the votes of a green constituency with expensive projects of uncertain value. Rather, their legitimacy is strengthened by delivering increased living standards, and that is just what they intend to do.

The author is disingenuous to claim that these countries are acting in the service of of "planetary suicide", the breathless accusations of western green activists to the contrary. The Chinese leadership is well-educated. They can read the IPCC reports. They know what the likely consequences are. Planetary suicide is not among them.

Their leaders also know it's a hell of a lot better to be not-poor than poor. They think they are making a rational decision by frustrating the western green lobby's plans. And I'm pretty sure they are right. It's going to take a hell of a lot bigger bribe than $100 billion to convince them otherwise.

I would strongly recommend this 4 minute video to everyone on the issue:

"Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion" - the video talks about how environmentalism offers salvation and a complete belief structure for many people, but that the religion/faith aspect of it gets in the way of science. Regardless of your views on the environment, it might be insightful for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9OSxTy1aU

As for China, I lived in China for a short time a few years back. I wasn't convinced at all that they're the next world power - the government and infrastructure were so far behind the West that I didn't think it'd happen. But watching how China adjusted when the U.S. banking sector fell apart last year has convinced me that they're going to the top.

The American government printed a lot, which should make our U.S. Dollars fall relative to other currencies, including Chinese RMB. China in turn printed about the same amount of money and invested it into Chinese infrastructure and tax breaks for their businesses - driving the cost of Chinese goods even lower.

They're building the same sort of infrastructure and industrialization that the United States did during the Cold War. They're also liberalizing and gradually loosening and eliminating central government while we're currently expanding the role of central government. Considering their population is three times larger, if the United States want to keep military parity with China over the next 30 years, they'll have to change their economic policies or they're going to go bankrupt. There's some difficult choices facing the USA soon - China is definitely on the rise.

They face some hurdles - can they integrate and keep friendly the Cantonese, Xianjianese, Tibetans, Macanese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kongese to some extent into the primarily Mandarin Han government? The effects of the One Child Policy will be interesting to see - the gender imbalance and all. China breaking into Civil War is a very real possibility in the next 30-50 years, but if they don't, they're on the rise globally and will be the next world power.

It's pretty rational of them (and arguably, morally upright): emissions-per-capita is caused by a high standard of living (barring a few confounding factors), and industrialized nations are asking China to restrict themselves to a much lower emissions-per-capita than we are targeting ourselves.

If china would simply put out all it's underground coal mine fires, that alone could remove 360 million tons of CO2 emissions. (As much as all the cars and light trucks in the US.)

Just pure waste from china is alone responsible for a very large chunk of CO2 emissions.

http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro...

I'm not sure of this, but all that I have read on the subject seems to indicate that the US wasn't willing to go in for legally binding emission cuts either. If I'm not wrong on that count, then what basis does the US have to go about trying to force other countries, especially developing countries into legally binding accords? Isn't the US the single largest polluting country? Should they not be cleaning up their own act too?

Saner heads in the room prevailed (Chinese heads).

And I'm glad they did, they did us a service.

I don't want my country to be shipping out hundreds of billions a year to despotic regimes in the hope that there is a chance in hell the money would go to the uses it was intended for and not serve as a slush fund for well connected government officials.

I don't want my country to do the worst possible thing it could to its already weak economy by hamstringing it even further compared to rivals who do not have the same costs.

Also, I don't buy the guilt argument, I'm not about to apologize for the past 300 years of progress brought to humanity care of the West.

"Reparations" should not even be on the table in any way shape or form, they should be thanking us.

1.6 Billion people (quarter of the world's population), live without electricity. All of these people live in the developing nations. Without progress, these nations can't bring basic things like a glowing light bulb to large sections of their population.

I don't know if the chinese leadership is pragmatic or not, but it sort of makes sense to help your population today, than to help the planet in 50 years time.

I don’t think the choice is

Having lived in India and the UK, I'd say there is already a massive difference between India and UK, in terms of what we used. In India even if you can pay for water/electricity you just don't have access to it, there are regular power cuts in the summers as much as 8 hours a day in most cities. Running Water is available for a few hours a day. Most rich people drill a well and have a pump which pumps water into an overhead tank. For electricity, the rich have diesel generators, to run their homes.

In the UK, I've never experienced a power cut, never had any water shortage, no cut of gas to the house.

There just isn't any infrastructure in poorer nations. If you are poor you are on your own. If you are rich you are still on your own, but you have the resources to fix the problem for yourself.

I think it is important that 1.6 billion of us get electricity some time in the near future.

I wonder, is there or could there be a list of emissions, not by countries, but by companies and industries? For example, wasn't there a news item recently about cargo shipping being the worst offender?

Maybe such a list would be more efficient than certificate trading between countries. Just as for optimizing computer programs, it might make sense to eliminate the worst offenders first. Maybe a lot of bad offenders would be easy to fix. Negotiating emission rates between countries might be akin to premature optimization.

Maybe satellites could be used to spot CO2 emission hot spots? With some additional logic, hot spots could be assigned to industries (ie if it is at sea, it is likely to be a ship. If it is on land, Google Maps probably knows the name of the company). Just wondering how to compile such a list...

One of the assumptions here is that economic growth necessarily makes people happier. Studies on happiness indicate that up to a point, more wealth makes people happier. After that, there is no impact.

So forgive me if I'm cynical about the hysteria about the effects of cutting carbon emissions. A lot of people live in abject poverty, but that is a problem of distribution, not total numbers. The gap between the rich and poor has been widening so quickly that despite the growth in GDP, in real terms, the poor have been getting poorer.

Economic growth, as it stands, does little to help most people, and much to further fill the pockets of the rich.

I'd like to take a little poll, if I might. The basis:

1) There was a plan in Copenhagen to give $100 billion to poor nations to "help them cope with climate change".

2) Since 1998 the temperature of the earth has fallen about 0.4 F.

3) The actions these nations need to take against global warming are very different than those they need to take against global cooling.

Questions:

1) Is the money they were to be given to be spent to protect against warming, or cooling?

2) Whichever one you picked, why aren't they more specific in their namimg? Why the ambiguity?

undefined

Hedging my bets, I'm saving up for my space ticket. http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/space-tickets/

I don't quite see how the warmongering of guardian managed to get on hacker news

From the Guidelines for this forum: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics,..."

Please don't turn this into a place for politics, instant support groups, lolcats, and recycled memes from 4chan. That place is called reddit.

undefined

Welcome to: http://www.wowowbiz.com The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada,adidas, also including the eans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept online payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time. http://www.wowowbiz.com our price: jordan air max oakland raiders $34--39; Ed Hardy AF JUICY POLO Bikini $25; Christan Audigier BIKINI JACKET $25; gstar coogi evisu true jeans $35; coach chanel gucci LV handbags $36; coogi DG edhardy gucci t-shirts $18; CA edhardy vests.paul smith shoes $32; jordan dunk af1 max gucci shoes $37; EDhardy gucci ny New Era cap $16; coach okely Adidas CHANEL DG Sunglass $18; http://www.wowowbiz.com thank you for your visit Wish you a merry Christmas

As much as I hate the commies (wherever they reside), I think the Chinese saved the world from a scam of unheard proportions. To make far-reaching policy decisions based on doctored data and questionable analysis would be criminal. Until there is an open, solid scientific basis for the AGW hypothesis absolutely nothing should be undertaken along the lines of what these people suggest. There are other serious environmental issues (like contamination) which deserve far more attention; they are understood and well documented. AGW at the moment looks like a scam. It is a good thing the Chinese couldn't be bought off or tricked by the fraudsters.

Amazing...it's like reading reddit.com, but with Hacker News as the title.

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ahmdz/how_do_i_kn...

There's no need for China to cut emissions. As western economy fails in the next 2 decades, its emissions will drastically fall as well. So why should east cut down emissions if western economy will cut back by itself?

This whole Copenhagen fiasco was to put a lid on developing nations so the west could further delay the transfer of global power to the Asian nations.

USA had no intention of cutting its own emissions but asks China that they should. What kind of deal is that?

Although I hate communism, I find myself more in agreement with China than US policymakers with respect to war, trade, economic policy, and regulation. China seems more pro-freedom than the US.

Case in point: by wrecking the Copenhagen deal, China has helped the cause of liberty in the western countries by making it harder for governments in increase taxes and regulations on its citizens.