U.S.-China climate deal offers new hope: Our view

     On Wednesday, November 12, 2014 USA Today published an article titled “U.S.-China climate deal offers new hope: Our view.” The article (written by The Editorial Board) is about how global warming is now becoming a “global problem that requires a global solution.” China and the United States together produce about 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, which therefor accounts them as the majority for the rise of global warming. Beijing made an announcement recently that the emissions were becoming an issue and needed to be dealt with immediately. Up until recently, China and the United States have been going back and forth on who was going to fix the problem first. “China has resisted limits because the U.S. and other nations had a decades-long head start on industrialization. The U.S has been reluctant to act only to see increases from China swamp any U.S. reductions.” Now both the United States and China are trying to fix the global warming issue, “President Obama set a new target to cut U.S. carbon pollution 26%-28% from 2005 levels by 2025. And Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged — for the first time — to cap his nation's carbon emissions by 2030 and sharply increase its share of non-fossil fuel energy.”

     Of course the climate change issue won’t get solved entirely; however it is a start in the right direction. According to the Editorial Board, “The agreement also will give a big boost to United Nations climate talks next month in Peru and next year in France. With China (24% of global greenhouse gases) and the U.S. (15%) on board, it will be easier to bring along other big emitters, such as the European Union (10%) and India (6%).”