Is it
just me, or is Pres. Obama having a very, very good week at the APEC summit?
Despite the many obstacles before him outlined by my colleague Colin earlier
this week,
Pres. Obama has – in a very short period of time, at a summit where rhetoric
usually substitutes for action – reached several important deals with Chinese
premier Xi Jinping: visas
between the two countries were given much longer lifespans, tariffs
on high-tech devices were lowered, military
confrontations are to be avoided, and now a historic deal on climate change has
been reached. Not bad for a president with a lame duck congress at home and a
Republican-controlled congress on the horizon.
The
announcement today that the US and China had reached a deal on climate change
has been met with much fanfare, and with good reason. The US essentially agreed
to double its cuts in emissions, reducing emissions by 26-28% by 2025 from 2005
levels. China, for its part, agreed that it would reach “peak emissions” by
2030, a date it was previously unwilling to state publicly, and use at least
20% zero-emission energy by 2030 as well. While these measures will not reverse
the pace of climate change, they may in fact help the world to avoid a worst-case
scenario of 4 degree Celsius temperature rises by 2100 (i.e. environmental
catastrophe, if not apocalypse).
