EU climate target lacks scientific basis, says China By Richard Spencer in Beijing


Last Updated: 2:00am BST 05/06/2007
The developing world's resistance to Western-led initiatives over climate change stepped up yesterday when China rejected the European Union's key global warming target.
Unveiling its own long-awaited "Climate Change Action Plan", the Chinese government said the EU's goal of keeping a rise in global temperatures to within two degrees centigrade was in need of more work.
"I fear this lacks a scientific basis," said Ma Kai, the minister in charge of China's chief economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission.
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China has already given notice that it will reject any calls for a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions at the G8 meeting of major economic powers in Germany this week.
India, which like China is not a member of the G8 but attends as a representative of major emerging economies, has also rejected emissions caps. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, a third member of the same "developing nation club", has meanwhile attacked a proposal by President George W Bush for a summit of 15 polluting nations to come up with a global climate change plan by the end of next year.
Developing countries supported the Kyoto accord on global warming partly because it set them no clear targets for their contribution to the fight against global warming. All argue that with per capita emissions far lower than the West's, they should be allowed to first focus on development and the environment later.
China has become increasingly defensive since the International Energy Agency reported that it could overtake the United States this year as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
The goals which China announced yesterday do not differ from existing targets, several of which are not yet being met.
Among them is a plan to improve energy intensity - the consumption of energy per unit of gross domestic product - by 20 per cent from 2005 to 2010.
Given that its GDP is rising by an average of about 10 per cent per year, even that figure would only slow the growth of energy use, not cut it.
Last year, the reduction in China was only 1.2 per cent, far short of the four per cent needed every year to meet its stated goal.