Word: washington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...finally agreed to engage in the U.N.-led climate negotiations, but attempts at a deal that works for both Washington and China have met with repeated failures. The problem is clear: before it commits to reductions, the U.S. wants China to agree to limits - but the Chinese, who said this week they were ready to reduce the rate of growth of emissions by a "notable margin," rightly point out that Kyoto spares China and all developing nations from binding emissions-cuts targets unless they are compensated...
...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 face with their domestic constituencies...
...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...
...about 90% of the athletes would compete within a 15-minute drive of the proposed Olympic Village site, not far from Chicago's downtown. Many events would take place in city parks, and most new facilities - including the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, scheduled for the South Side's Washington Park - would be temporary, a strategy intended to avert the Olympics' worst legacy, expensive venues that sit idle for years. And then there's the Obama factor: the leader of the free world calls Chicago home and will personally travel to Copenhagen to pitch the IOC. (See 100 Olympic athletes...
Some Chicagoans seem not to want the hassle. Construction of the Olympic Stadium would make much of Washington Park inaccessible for at least six months. "I love this park," says Aaron Fonville, 42, while watching a neighborhood baseball game on a recent Sunday. "I don't want to see anyone messing with its preservation." The $1 billion Olympic Village, meanwhile, is scheduled to replace a set of historic hospital buildings designed by famed German Modernist Walter Gropius - a plan that Jonathan Fine, executive director of Preservation Chicago, calls "cultural vandalism...