China

China's Efforts on Climate Deal Partly Down to its Pollution

China's push for a global climate pact is partly because of its own increasingly pressing need to solve serious environmental problems, observers said Sunday.

China, the world's biggest source of climate-changing gases, was blamed for obstructing the last high-level climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. This time around, it sent strong political signals it wanted a deal ahead of and during the Paris negotiations that ended Saturday with the agreement to keep global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) between now and 2100.

"Environmental issues have become much more important to the Chinese public and therefore to the Chinese government," said Dimitri de Boer, head of China Carbon Forum, a Beijing-based nonprofit.

Since 2009, the public has gone from not knowing much or caring about environmental issues "and mainly being focused on wanting to make some money, to now being very concerned with environmental issues and taking that on par with wanting to make money," he said.

China's cities are among the world's dirtiest after three decades of explosive economic growth that led to construction of hundreds of coal-fired power plants and an increase in car ownership.

China pushed for a deal because of its own environmental challenges and because the effects of climate change are becoming clearer each year, said Jiang Kejun, senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning agency.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that China's push for a successful conclusion to the Paris negotiations "fully shows that China is dealing with climate change issues as a responsible big country."

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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