U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

The White House

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 18, 2008

Press Briefing on Major Economies Meeting by Jim Connaughton, Chairman, White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs

Via Telephone

2:17 P.M. EDT

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

Q: Thanks for holding the briefing. I guess my question relates to what input you heard today from the developing countries -- basically, China and India -- are they still discussing a per capita kind of approach? Also, all that mid-term and financing talk, there's some cart and horse problems here, it seems. If you're not close to settling on the long-term goal, how can you even have meaningful discussions about mid-term course points that get you toward that goal?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Okay, let me deal with the second part first, if that's all right.

You know, we really do see these pieces fitting question as your question implies. In Bali, all the countries agreed that deep cuts are going to be necessary. So that was a step forward among all the participants, in recognition of the information from the IPCC.

And so as we look quantitatively, there's still a lot of questions about the current proposal, which is cutting emissions in half by 2050. And those discussions really center on two things. One is just feasibility. If you look at the current sort of stock of energy systems around the world today, a number of countries -- and in particular some key developing countries -- have just been raising the practical question of, is that particular level of ambition feasible by 2050?

There is then a second set of issues that I think you're discussing, which is, which countries proceed on what trajectory. There continues to be a sense that the developed countries should lead, and they should. But there still remains a sensible how -- what's the level of effort that the major developing countries should be undertaking along with the rest of us. And sometimes this gets couched, you know, as a "we will proceed and they will do nothing" -- which is not correct.

We have learned, and I think this major economies process has been a catalyst for the major developing countries to get quite aggressive about creating plans. And I think this is an area worth it for all of you to look into. There is now Cabinet-level action underway in South Africa, in Mexico, in South Korea, in China, and in India. All of this activity -- unprecedented, actually, given past history on this issue. And that's something we welcome.

And so we're still struggling between what's actually going on, and then countries positioning for their U.N. negotiations. And I think that is one of the challenges of the major economies process -- can the leaders feel comfortable enough saying what they're actually going to be doing, and reflect on those commitments, or, you know, how much of this will be affected by maintaining negotiating positions from the U.N. process. And that's something we'll sort through.

On the per capita approach, that's still an item in discussion. From the U.S. perspective, all of these metrics matter. Absolute emission reductions matter. Your improvements of intensity --

(LONG DROP IN AUDIO FEED)

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: -- budget commitment to the program design, but if I had to single some countries out, Canada is ahead, the U.K., Germany. And I think from that we're going to be able to build a more coherent sector-based strategy on carbon capture and storage, and that would be one of the -- we would hope that that would come together over the course of this year, especially -- we've gotten advice from MIT and other research bodies, and a lot of other countries are looking at that and designing their own programs.

We need all countries to invest in this if we want to move fast.

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

END

2:53 P.M. EDT