China : poverty reduction, energy security more important than capping emissions
People in the wealthy post-industrialised world tend to forget that for developing nations access to abundant and cheap energy resources is crucial in the fight against poverty. Westerners often hope these countries can somehow skip the polluting fossil fuel path which turned Europe, the US and Japan into prosperous regions, ‘leapfrog’ into a greener, far more efficient and low carbon future, and fight poverty in the process. But is this is a highly idealistic, very tall order indeed.
The economies of developing countries are energy intensive, and without energy security and affordable fuels, all efforts at social development are in vain. We are already seeing the truly catastrophic socio-economic effects of high oil prices on the poorest countries, some of which are now forced to spend up to six times more on importing oil than on health care and poverty alleviation. Asking such countries to make energy even more expensive by putting a carbon tax on fossil fuels or by capping emissions in order to fight climate change would be unacceptable to many of them. In fact, some energy experts have warned that in the medium term, high energy prices could indeed be more threatening to societies than climate change.
A Chinese top official, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui, made this crystal clear by saying Beijing will reject binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions at the UNFCCC’s global meeting in Bali next month, because developing countries must be allowed to use more energy and consequently raise emissions to fight poverty.
Full Article - Source : ©BioPact.com
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