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from the obama-sharing-world-leadership-with-china dept.
The NYT reports that President Obama spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Summit and challenged China to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming. Obama's words were directly focused on putting the onus on China, an essential partner of the United States if a global climate treaty is to be negotiated by 2015. The United States and China bear a “special responsibility to lead,” said Obama, “That’s what big nations have to do.” The United States, Obama said, would meet a pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2020—a goal that is in large part expected to be met through proposed EPA regulation.
There were indications that China might be ready with its own plan, although many experts say they will be skeptical until Chinese officials reveal the details. A senior Chinese official said his country would try to reach a peak level of carbon emissions “as early as possible.” That suggested that the Chinese government, struggling with air pollution so extreme that it has threatened economic growth, regularly kept millions of children indoors and ignited street protests, was determined to show faster progress in curbing emissions. In recent years, the Chinese government has sent other signals about addressing carbon pollution, some of them encouraging to environmental experts. “Five years ago, it was almost unimaginable to discuss China putting a cap on carbon, but now that is happening,” said Lo Sze Ping, chief executive officer of the World Wildlife Fund’s office in Beijing. “Chinese leaders have seen that it is imperative to move toward a low-carbon economy.”
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 26 2014, @02:15AM
Who here really thinks Obama has any cause or credibility to discuss what happens after his administration is over? My view is that it won't happen.
There's been a current substantial reduction in US CO2 emissions due to fracking. That gain is more or less achieved. The rest is going to have to occur at the expense of genuine efforts to cut back. Then you run hard into the next two problems. First, that the EPA hasn't been given the authority to regulate CO2 emissions. Their current attempts will have to survive court challenges.
Second, the next administration is likely to reverse anything Obama does here. If something is done by executive fiat, then it can be reversed by executive fiat. That's the classic pharaoh problem (where the next pharaoh would scrub most traces of his predecessor and then erect his own monuments to be scrubbed in turn by his successor.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday September 26 2014, @11:13AM
Nope no credibility on anything, it's all momentum and inertia and has been for a while. It's why they're freaking out all over the place (a little bit of bombing here, giving away a few billions for weapons there and there, some humanitarian boots on the ground over there, shipping around some enemy chemical weapons back there, and some bizarre delusional prancing in front of the UN General Assembly, ooh and a coffee salute! What's the time Obama!?) and I don't think they even care if people believe them any more as long as they can fill the news with enough new bullshit to if not actually distract then at least keep other stuff off the front page; the checkbox list had reached down to ‘Global Warming’ is all.
Haven't been many sex scandals lately has there? Maybe they're saving them for a rainy day.
Not to give them any more wacky ideas but maybe they'll start bombing against ebola next, establish sanctions against South America ('cause Russia boo hoo hoo), claim they've caught the new Snowden (any scapegoat will do, just send them a hard drive in the post first), launch a few big attacks against US companies from infiltrated Chinese machines and complain an awful lot, and discover the missing Malaysian plane on Mars. That should take care of a few more “news” cycles :P
Or maybe something like a clever terrorist attack on the shipborne destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons, they could milk that one for months and maybe do something really novel like claim Turkey was part of it (that would be a nice mess, it could last for years).
Who knows, anything goes.
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