Word: china
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...forward requires more than a split-the-difference compromise. The focus needs to shift. Fortunately, such a shift is possible through a more accurate interpretation of the existing agreement. First, it's important to understand that today's framework does not state that China and other developing nations should have no emissions limits ever. It says that such countries should be compensated if they set limits. This is quite different, and opens up the way for a novel agreement that would allow both Washington and Beijing to move simultaneously to break the diplomatic logjam over emissions reductions and to save...
...agreement - think of it as a financial trade - the U.S. would buy an option to require China to lower its emissions below a certain agreed level. At the same time, Beijing would take out what amounts to an insurance policy to establish a minimum amount that Washington would pay Beijing if or when the U.S. exercised its option. The cost of Beijing's insurance policy and the cost to the U.S. of exercising its option on China's emissions levels would be set at roughly the same price...
...country provides an automatic impulse toward greater liberty. Remember the talk, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, about democracy arriving hand in hand with free markets? As people became economically secure, they would demand better governance, greater freedoms. But that hasn't been the case in Russia, China or Central Asia. People in those places have found a way to disengage from politics while growing (mostly) more comfortable. Consumerism has provided the ultimate anesthetic. Perhaps there is no next stage. (See pictures of the Berlin Wall...
...financial terms the trade would leave neither country better off. But it would allow China, which is fast coming to terms with the fact that it has to do something about its pollution and emission levels, to truthfully tell its domestic audience that it is cutting them but that the U.S. is compensating it to do so. It would allow the U.S. to argue, also truthfully, that the cost of paying China to cut its emissions is minimal. This solution allows both sides to get what they want while ensuring cuts. (See pictures of China's electronic waste village...
...return for the promise of either prosperity or security. The model is Singapore, the city-state where I was born and a place that never ceases to fascinate me. But the pact's appeal is now far more widespread and takes in not just the countries you might expect - China, Russia - but plenty you might not. Perhaps even the country you live...