Reuters 14 Aug 09;
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's carbon emissions will start to fall by 2050, its top climate change policymaker said, the first time the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases has given a timeframe for a decline, the Financial Times reported Saturday.
The comments by Su Wei did not indicate at what level emissions would top out. He restated Beijing's view that because China still needs to expand its economy to pull people out of poverty, it was too soon to discuss emissions caps, the Financial Times said.
At a G8 meeting in July, China and India resisted calls to agree to a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2050, posing a major obstacle for a new United Nations pact due to be agreed upon in Copenhagen in mid-December.
"China's emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050," the Financial Times quoted Su, director-general of the climate change department at the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top planning body, as saying in an interview.
"China will not continue growing emissions without limit or insist that all nations must have the same per-capita emissions. If we did that, this earth would be ruined."
(Reporting by Edmund Klamann; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
China to start cutting carbon emissions in 2050: FT
Yahoo News 15 Aug 09;
BEIJING (AFP) – China will start cutting its carbon emissions by 2050, its top climate change policymaker was quoted as saying in the Financial Times Saturday, the first time the nation has given a timeframe.
"China's emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050," said Su Wei, director general of the National Development and Reform Commission's climate change department, according to the paper.
China competes with the United States for the spot as the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and intense interest is focused on its stance ahead of climate negotations in Copenhagen in December.
The December negotiations are aimed at hammering out a new climate change pact to replace the Kyoto protocol that expires in 2012.
As a developing nation with low per-capita emissions, China is not required to set emissions cuts under the UN Framework on Climate Change, and it has so far also seemed reluctant to accept caps in the future.
For the regime that will emerge after 2012, Su in Saturday's Financial Times seemed to signal a willingness to compromise.
"China will not continue growing emissions without limit or insist that all nations must have the same per-capita emissions. If we did that, this earth would be ruined," he said, according to the paper.
