Beijing Leads World in Climate Change Response, UN Says
Beijing Leads World in Climate Change Response, UN Says
The UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres spoke at AS/COA about the climate change challenges and how Mexico and Chile are planning to offset their carbon emissions.
China leads the world in improving climate thanks to a tradition of "long-term thinking and planning", the United Nations' top climate official said.
"It's not just the political system (causing the progress), it's the capacity to think and plan into the long term," Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told an audience on Tuesday at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas in Manhattan.
With hopes of a global climate agreement facing a critical two years leading up to what is expected to be the decisive meeting in Paris in December 2015, China is battling severe smog problems stemming from its world-leading coal dependency that chokes thousands and forces them to wear face masks, Figueres said. "There is public pressure to move toward cleaner energy sources," she said. "People in China would actually like to breathe air they don't have to look at...."
In her Manhattan talk, Figueres singled out Mexico, which like China, has launched a platform to trade carbon credits, a voluntary initiative that allows polluters to offset their emissions with tradeable certificates. The new platform, launched in November, is the second such exchange in Latin America, following the launch of Costa Rica's carbon market in October.
Figueres also spoke highly of Chile's plans announced last week to develop a $1 billion solar-thermal power plant....
