By JEFFREY BALL and SHAI OSTER
The world's top two greenhouse-gas-producing countries for the first time offered specific targets for controlling their emissions, but their broad promises ahead of a United Nations climate summit merely set the terms for a high-stakes struggle over money and future economic growth.
China kicked off the latest round of global climate poker Thursday when it announced the country would aim to cut its "carbon intensity" -- or the amount of greenhouse gas it emits per unit of gross domestic product -- by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2020. The plan is fundamentally different from those offered by the U.S. and the European Union in that it doesn't pledge to reduce emissions, but rather to slow the rate at which emissions grow.
The move came a day after President Barack Obama announced he would travel to the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen on Dec. 9 to deliver a pledge that the U.S. will cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050.
Left unanswered were a host of questions, most notably how both nations will achieve their cuts at a time when industries across the world are reeling from the recession and in no mood to sacrifice further economic growth in the name of the environment.
The proposals by the U.S. and China -- which together account for 40% of the world's total emissions -- don't address one of the most contentious issues in the climate-change debate: Which countries and industries in the West will pay, and how much they'll pay, to help finance a clean-energy revolution in the developing world, home to many of their toughest competitors.
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Vote: Do you think the Cophenhagen climate change summit will produce meaningful accomplishments?
China and other developing countries say they want the U.S. and other industrialized nations to pay 1% of their yearly gross domestic products to help the developing world finance emissions reductions.
China notes that the U.S. and Europe developed in an era without constraints on greenhouse-gas emissions, which are produced when fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are burned. Per capita incomes in China are less than a tenth of those in the U.S., despite the dramatic surge in wealth in the country's coastal cities.
If the rest of the world wants China to shift its economy toward a cleaner path, China says, the rest of the world is going to have to help China pay for that transformation. India and other developing countries make a similar argument.
U.S. officials have said they expect to offer some financial assistance to developing countries, but have not specified how much. U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern has said the request for 1% of GDP, which would translate to more than $140 billion for the U.S. alone, is "untethered from reality."
Many U.S. lawmakers and leaders of major U.S. industries are concerned that if the U.S. agrees to hard caps on emissions, and China agrees to become more energy efficient without a cap on growth, U.S. industries will be saddled with higher costs and become less competitive.
The National Association of Manufacturers said Thursday in a statement that it wants additional details on the Obama administration's pledge: "As we evaluate this proposal, we will do so with an eye toward its impact on American jobs, our economic recovery and long-term growth."
Beneath the green rhetoric, the actual promises from the U.S. and China don't appear to go far beyond near-term environmental improvements that the two economies already are on track to achieve, several analysts said. The recession has crimped industrial activity, and both countries have been improving their energy efficiency, because that cuts energy costs.
Enthusiasm for tough climate action has also waned in the U.S. as the economy has soured. The U.S. House passed a climate bill with limits similar to those Mr. Obama will propose in Copenhagen. But the Senate has put off action until spring.
The White House said Thursday that it welcomes "China's intention to cut the growth of their emissions," adding that the "international community will be closely analyzing this proposal."
Neither the Chinese nor the U.S. proposals may satisfy the EU, which has been well ahead of the U.S. in pledging cuts. The bloc's 27 nations have agreed to lower greenhouse-gas emissions 20% below their 1990 levels by 2020, or the equivalent of a 14% cut from 2005 levels. They have also agreed to a larger reduction, equivalent to a 24% cut from 2005 levels by 2020, if other nations outside the bloc make substantial cuts.
Some European leaders suggested that both the U.S. and Chinese pledges were insufficient. Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate and energy minister, said leaders "must analyze more carefully" how significant China's pledge is. As for the U.S., said Ms. Hedegaard, the bulk of the promised cleanup appears likely to come many years out.
Both the general idea of capping U.S. emissions and the details of how that cap might be structured remain hugely contentious in the U.S., pitting different regions of the country, and different industries, against each other.
The White House said its target reductions are conditional on Congressional approval. But that wasn't enough for some lawmakers. Sen. James Webb (D., Va.) sent a letter Wednesday to the White House expressing "concern" that U.S. officials "may be intending to commit" the U.S. to an emissions cap at the Copenhagen conference before Congress agrees to anything. Sen. Webb is one of several Democrats from states with significant coal-mining or heavy-industry interests who have expressed opposition to the climate proposals backed by Democrats from coastal states.
Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate envoy, said his country now expects "real action" by the West before the Copenhagen conference on funding and technical support to slow the growth in Chinese emissions. So far, he said, such support hasn't materialized.
China said the West also has failed to live up to its own emission-cutting promises so far. Europe imposed rules capping emissions from much of its industry in 2005, but to date its reductions haven't matched its promises, Chinese officials said.
Emissions through 2008 of the EU nations are down more than 10% since 1990, more than halfway to the target of a 20% cut by 2020.
The pledges by the U.S. and China followed a development in recent days that many analysts said could erode public support for expensive policies to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Hacked emails from an influential U.K. climate-science lab suggest that researchers there tried to squelch scientific challenges to what has become scientific consensus: that human beings are largely responsible for climate change.
The emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. They suggest that many scientists around the world were concerned about the policy implications of a recent decline in average global temperatures. Although global temperatures remain among the hottest on record, they have declined since 2005, according to various measurements.
Opponents of significant curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions have pointed to the disclosed emails as reason to pause before implementing any broad policies.
—Charles Forelle, Stephen Power and Evan Perez contributed to this article.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com and Shai Oster at shai.oster@wsj.com
The world's top two greenhouse-gas-producing countries for the first time offered specific targets for controlling their emissions, but their broad promises ahead of a United Nations climate summit merely set the terms for a high-stakes struggle over money and future economic growth.
China kicked off the latest round of global climate poker Thursday when it announced the country would aim to cut its "carbon intensity" -- or the amount of greenhouse gas it emits per unit of gross domestic product -- by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2020. The plan is fundamentally different from those offered by the U.S. and the European Union in that it doesn't pledge to reduce emissions, but rather to slow the rate at which emissions grow.
The move came a day after President Barack Obama announced he would travel to the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen on Dec. 9 to deliver a pledge that the U.S. will cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050.
Left unanswered were a host of questions, most notably how both nations will achieve their cuts at a time when industries across the world are reeling from the recession and in no mood to sacrifice further economic growth in the name of the environment.
The proposals by the U.S. and China -- which together account for 40% of the world's total emissions -- don't address one of the most contentious issues in the climate-change debate: Which countries and industries in the West will pay, and how much they'll pay, to help finance a clean-energy revolution in the developing world, home to many of their toughest competitors.
Journal Community
Vote: Do you think the Cophenhagen climate change summit will produce meaningful accomplishments?
China and other developing countries say they want the U.S. and other industrialized nations to pay 1% of their yearly gross domestic products to help the developing world finance emissions reductions.
China notes that the U.S. and Europe developed in an era without constraints on greenhouse-gas emissions, which are produced when fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are burned. Per capita incomes in China are less than a tenth of those in the U.S., despite the dramatic surge in wealth in the country's coastal cities.
If the rest of the world wants China to shift its economy toward a cleaner path, China says, the rest of the world is going to have to help China pay for that transformation. India and other developing countries make a similar argument.
U.S. officials have said they expect to offer some financial assistance to developing countries, but have not specified how much. U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern has said the request for 1% of GDP, which would translate to more than $140 billion for the U.S. alone, is "untethered from reality."
Many U.S. lawmakers and leaders of major U.S. industries are concerned that if the U.S. agrees to hard caps on emissions, and China agrees to become more energy efficient without a cap on growth, U.S. industries will be saddled with higher costs and become less competitive.
The National Association of Manufacturers said Thursday in a statement that it wants additional details on the Obama administration's pledge: "As we evaluate this proposal, we will do so with an eye toward its impact on American jobs, our economic recovery and long-term growth."
Beneath the green rhetoric, the actual promises from the U.S. and China don't appear to go far beyond near-term environmental improvements that the two economies already are on track to achieve, several analysts said. The recession has crimped industrial activity, and both countries have been improving their energy efficiency, because that cuts energy costs.
Enthusiasm for tough climate action has also waned in the U.S. as the economy has soured. The U.S. House passed a climate bill with limits similar to those Mr. Obama will propose in Copenhagen. But the Senate has put off action until spring.
The White House said Thursday that it welcomes "China's intention to cut the growth of their emissions," adding that the "international community will be closely analyzing this proposal."
Neither the Chinese nor the U.S. proposals may satisfy the EU, which has been well ahead of the U.S. in pledging cuts. The bloc's 27 nations have agreed to lower greenhouse-gas emissions 20% below their 1990 levels by 2020, or the equivalent of a 14% cut from 2005 levels. They have also agreed to a larger reduction, equivalent to a 24% cut from 2005 levels by 2020, if other nations outside the bloc make substantial cuts.
Some European leaders suggested that both the U.S. and Chinese pledges were insufficient. Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate and energy minister, said leaders "must analyze more carefully" how significant China's pledge is. As for the U.S., said Ms. Hedegaard, the bulk of the promised cleanup appears likely to come many years out.
Both the general idea of capping U.S. emissions and the details of how that cap might be structured remain hugely contentious in the U.S., pitting different regions of the country, and different industries, against each other.
The White House said its target reductions are conditional on Congressional approval. But that wasn't enough for some lawmakers. Sen. James Webb (D., Va.) sent a letter Wednesday to the White House expressing "concern" that U.S. officials "may be intending to commit" the U.S. to an emissions cap at the Copenhagen conference before Congress agrees to anything. Sen. Webb is one of several Democrats from states with significant coal-mining or heavy-industry interests who have expressed opposition to the climate proposals backed by Democrats from coastal states.
Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate envoy, said his country now expects "real action" by the West before the Copenhagen conference on funding and technical support to slow the growth in Chinese emissions. So far, he said, such support hasn't materialized.
China said the West also has failed to live up to its own emission-cutting promises so far. Europe imposed rules capping emissions from much of its industry in 2005, but to date its reductions haven't matched its promises, Chinese officials said.
Emissions through 2008 of the EU nations are down more than 10% since 1990, more than halfway to the target of a 20% cut by 2020.
The pledges by the U.S. and China followed a development in recent days that many analysts said could erode public support for expensive policies to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Hacked emails from an influential U.K. climate-science lab suggest that researchers there tried to squelch scientific challenges to what has become scientific consensus: that human beings are largely responsible for climate change.
The emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. They suggest that many scientists around the world were concerned about the policy implications of a recent decline in average global temperatures. Although global temperatures remain among the hottest on record, they have declined since 2005, according to various measurements.
Opponents of significant curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions have pointed to the disclosed emails as reason to pause before implementing any broad policies.
—Charles Forelle, Stephen Power and Evan Perez contributed to this article.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com and Shai Oster at shai.oster@wsj.com
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