Yesterday, during a town hall in Shanghai, President Obama said that the United States and China should be held to different standards for reducing their emissions since China (the world’s highest CO2 emitter) has “much more poverty”:
“There's going to be a Copenhagen conference in December in which world leaders are trying to find a recipe so that we can all make commitments that are differentiated so each country would not have the same obligations -- obviously China, which has much more poverty, should not have to do exactly the same thing as the United States -- but all of us should have these certain obligations in terms of what our plan will be to reduce these greenhouse gases.”
“So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
In September 2009, the Wall Street Journalreported that:
“China's ambition to create ‘green cities’ powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well.”