Mind unspoken intention of Western climate change diplomacy

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-24 16:11

I'm keeping coughing after a brief visit to a sizable developing nation -- not because of a possible A/H1N1 infection but the continuous exposure to strong smell of fuel and pollutants on roads of the country, where 20-year-old obsolete cars rattled everywhere.

Coincidentally, a colleague of mine talked to me about one mountainous country he lately toured, saying that air pollution there was roughly ten times, though he failed to supply scientific data, of that in Beijing.

While many Beijing residents, including foreign expatriates, are still not satisfied with air quality in the city, the government of the Chinese capital is implementing one of the world's harshest vehicle emissions rules, particularly after 2008 when Beijing hosted a summer Olympics. The improvement is noticeable.

After three decades' rapid economic growth, China became the world's third largest economy as well as one of the biggest emitters of green house gases (GHGs).

As almost all industrialized countries did in their early stage of development, China used to follow the growth path of ineffective energy consumption and rampant encroachment of natural resources.

Now China is eager to create a greener economy, for not only its own people, but also the whole planet. Chinese president pledged a cut of GHGs emissions by a "notable margin" by 2020 compared with 2005, even though no existing international conventions or regimes require China, as one developing nation, to make such a promise.

If we could only turn back time to the first decades of the global industrialization, China would have been ranked among the most self-disciplined students in the class due to the introspection of coordinating its own economic development with the needs for protecting nature.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was signed and approved by more than 192 countries in the world, specifies that industrialized countries contributed to the biggest chunk of human emissions in history.

If there is any cap for each country in accordance with its historical performance, some scientists argue, all UNFCCC-annexed industrialized economies have already used up their respective portions of GHGs emissions.

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