Climate change could threaten China’s growing prosperity, if it does not join global efforts to reign in output of carbon dioxide, Britain’s foreign minister said on Monday after a visit to the world’s number two emitter

HONG KONG, China; May 24, 2007.- “If we don’t tackle the impact of climate change, the prosperity of China could be threatened, but then so is the prosperity of the whole world,” said British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett during a visit to Hong Kong after a trip to China where she met top leaders.

“China’s made some substantial strides… in reducing the intensity of energy usage… but of course they want to and we all need them to make still more progress,” she added.

Temperatures across the country have risen faster than global averages over the past fifty years, and a government report warned it faces droughts in the north, increased flooding in the south and falling crop yields as the globe gets hotter.

“We’re talking about a potentially very, very serious impact,” Beckett added, saying the world needed China to make a transition to a low-carbon energy efficient economy successfully.

But Beijing has rejected caps on its emissions growth for the coming decades, and called for more technology transfer.

Officials argue rich nations are responsible for most of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and should lead efforts to cut back emissions while allowing developing countries to industrialise.

But China could overtake the United States to become the top emitter of global warming gasses as early as this year, the International Energy Agency has said, raising pressure on its government to act.

Despite recent UN reports ringing alarm bells on global warming, pessimism has mounted over the prospects of launching formal talks to extend the Kyoto protocol on the reduction of carbon emissions beyond 2012 at a conference in Indonesia in December.

The United States has refused to ratify Kyoto, while rapidly developing nations like China and India were not set targets.

At a Group of Eight meeting next month, hosts Germany want member countries to agree to halve climate-warming carbon emissions by 2050 and promote carbon trading to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Beckett said the U.K. would be “pushing hard for consensus” at this meeting.

(Reuters)

 

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