{"id":2866,"date":"2009-12-24T11:37:15","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T16:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=2866"},"modified":"2009-12-24T11:37:15","modified_gmt":"2009-12-24T16:37:15","slug":"negotiating-to-lose-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/2866\/negotiating-to-lose-on-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiating to Lose on Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the fundamental rules of negotiating is being able and willing to walk away without a deal. Apparently, during the make-or-break round of the Copenhagen climate conference only China remembered the rule<\/a>. Of course, the \u201cdeal\u201d it secured with Western countries was far less than Obama, Brown, Merkel, etc. wanted \u2013 but that was the point.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Western leaders desperately wanted a deal, and kept larding on concessions. Take out previously agreed to emissions targets? Okay. Remove specific reduction deadlines? Fine. How about eliminating independent verification of compliance? Yes. Like a \u201cmoderate\u201d Democratic Senator holding out for the sweetest deal possible, China played the world for stooges, and won.<\/p>\n

China not only didn\u2019t need a deal \u2013 it didn\u2019t want one. But if the \u201cinternational community\u201d was going to insist on \u201csomething\u201d to show for the two-week confab, China was happy to give next to nothing and make it look like the West failed to be serious. For eco-philes the dismal end to \u201cHopenhagen\u201d shouldn\u2019t be that surprising considering China\u2019s position, though for some<\/a> it is:<\/p>\n

Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, “not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?” The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now “in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years’ time”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When considered in the context of China\u2019s overall approach to foreign policy, the country\u2019s obstructionism is not novel. Whether it\u2019s protecting Iran<\/a> from sanctions, propping up North Korea<\/a>, or bankrolling Sudan<\/a>, China is not a nation promising the kind of multi-lateral hope and change global government types are waiting for. For America haters everywhere, China\u2019s rise to power does not portend a kinder, gentler world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the fundamental rules of negotiating is being able and willing to walk away without a deal. Apparently, during the make-or-break round of the Copenhagen climate conference only China remembered the rule. Of course, the \u201cdeal\u201d it secured with Western countries was far less than Obama, Brown, Merkel, etc. wanted \u2013 but that was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135,26,443,130,134,312],"class_list":["post-2866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-copenhagen","tag-iran","tag-north-korea","tag-sudan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2871,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}