There have been two major blocks hindering action to deal with looming climate upheaval. One is political and the other is theoretical. The political good news is that it is reported that the US and China, whose combined greenhouse gas emissions nearly match the rest of the world’s, are now engaged on talks at a new level of intensity on cutting CO2 emissions which observers say is the most promising development in nearly 20 years of climate change negotiations.

That is highly significant because the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding UN climate pact ever agreed, was gravely weakened because the US under Bush never ratified it and China as a ‘developing country’ was never bound by it. The US-China economic rivalry also scuppered the key Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 which were meant to renew this protocol. Now however Xie Zhenhua, the leading Chinese negotiator, is declaring: “We should be confident that the Paris meeting (the world summit on climate change next year) will not be another Copenhagen”. What is driving this is not a sudden conversion of the world’s two great economic powers, but rather hard-headed political realities. Continue reading →