Climate norms gets US, China consensus

Beijing: A groundbreaking agreement struck by the United States and China is putting the world’s two worst polluters on a faster track to curbing the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

The U.S., a chief proponent of the prospective treaty, is setting an ambitious new goal to stop pumping as much carbon dioxide into the air. China, whose appetite for cheap energy has grown along with its burgeoning economy, agreed for the first time to a self-imposed deadline of 2030 for when its emissions will top out.

Although it wasn’t clear how either the U.S. or China would meet their goals, the deal had been hashed out behind the scenes for months.

The U.S. officials said that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry floated the idea during a visit to China in February, and Obama followed up by writing Xi.

Under the agreement, Obama set a goal to cut U.S. emissions between 26 and 28 per cent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. Officials have said the U.S. is already on track to meet Obama’s earlier goal to lower emissions 17 percent by 2020, and that the revised goal meant the U.S. would be cutting pollution roughly twice as fast during a five-year period starting in 2020.

China, whose emissions are growing as it builds new coal plants, set a target for its emissions to peak by about 2030 with the idea being that its emissions would then start falling.

Meanwhile, the two countries are also planning to announce military agreements aimed at reducing the possibility of confrontation between the two powers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Washington and Beijing will set rules of behavior in cases of encounters in the sea and air, the newspaper said.

The summit comes at a time of growing China-U.S. friction, with Washington trying to expand American interests in Asia, while Xi demonstrates more willingness than his predecessors to demonstrate Beijing's clout on regional issues, including the pursuit of maritime claims in Asia.