Word: china
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...Meanwhile, China's neighbor Japan came out with the most aggressive carbon-emission cuts in the world. Japan's new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, pledged to reduce Japan's carbon emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. Although European nations have long promised to cut their own emissions by 20% and potentially more, Japan is the most energy-efficient large economy in the world, and is poised to become a living laboratory for fighting climate change. "I am resolved to exercise the political will to deliver on this promise," said Hatoyama, whose party in recent elections overthrew the Liberal Democratic...
...Indeed, leadership on climate change may be shifting to the East. Hu emphasized that China's economic policies would continue to promote the country's rapid development, and it isn't clear just how ambitious China's emissions cuts will be. As Todd Stern, the U.S.'s top climate diplomat, told reporters on Tuesday: "It all depends on what the numbers will be." But from the outside, it looks like China is forging ahead while the U.S. remains mired in domestic politics. "The question is whether [China] will prompt Obama and the Senate into action before Copenhagen," says Annie Petsonk...
...Representing the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Hu took a fateful step in announcing China would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. Several of the measures that Hu unveiled will have a dramatic impact, such as making 15 percent of China’s fuel come from non-fossil sources by that target date, while planting enough trees to cover what the Los Angeles Times calculated to be the entire size of Norway...
...climate chief Yvo de Boer reacted to Hu’s speech by saying that China could become the “front-runner” on climate change with these steps, depending on the U.S. government’s response. But this lofty aspiration depends on China reaching these targets and proving it has substance to match appealing words...
...Kyoto Protocol will be critical for the world’s future, and the U.S. must show initiative in helping to develop a system of short- and middle-term targets and emission reductions for all nations, including developing nations. In such a system, the massively growing nations of China and India will play a critical role. Just as the United States doomed the Kyoto Protocol by rejecting it, the non-participation of any nation in the upcoming Copenhagen talks will sap it of its significance...