Beijing, December 01: European leaders called on China to provide details on how it plans to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, saying today that Beijing’s status as the world’s largest polluter gives it a special responsibility to combat global warming.
India, meanwhile, is under growing pressure to offer up a plan of any kind with less than week to go before 192 nations gather in Copenhagen to try to craft an international agreement for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases believed responsible for global warming.
Scientists warn of potentially catastrophic climate change if average global temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, leading to rising seas and climate shifts that would produce droughts, floods and other severe disruptions.
To prevent that, greenhouse gas emissions should peak within the next few years and then rapidly decline by mid-century, according to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Announcements from both China and the US in the past week add significant weight toward achieving a global agreement — even though the December 7-18 Copenhagen conference is unlikely to produce a binding deal as hoped.
-PTI