to the US, China was able to counter international calls to shift away from fossil
fuels. The historic position of China against international pressure to accept
responsibility for its production of carbon emissions can be further evidenced at
COP 3 in Kyoto in which China ‘adamantly opposed any commitments to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions before it becomes a ‘middle income’ country’ 10 .
The focus on which nations were responsible for climate change shifted the
international discussion away from cutting carbon emissions and instead focused
discussion on who was to blame, inhibiting action to cut carbon emissions.
This US-China debate over responsibility is representative of a wider,
global North versus global South debate in which industrially developed
countries in the global North, with high historic carbon emissions, have
historically been critical of developing countries with high current carbon
emissions. States in the global South argue that it is the global North that should
take responsibility for historic emissions and use their financial and technological capabilities to ‘promote less polluting development in the South’ 11 . This argument by the South, although accepted by the North, was met with a ‘lack of political will’ 12 from the North due to the cost and scale of actually pursuing such
a policy. This divide between the global North and South resulted in a stalemate,
primarily as a result of the global South making demands which the global North
(despite having the means to accept) did not have the political will to accept.
The lack of political will from the North is what resulted in this stalemate as
without financial and technological backing from the more politically powerful
North, the South was not able to reduce its emissions, regardless of its
intentions, due to both sides being unwilling to compromise.
2%82%82&Accounting=Production- based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Cumulative [accessed 11/11/2022)
10 Hongyuan, p.56. 11 Paterson, p.76. 12 Paterson, p.76.
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