Chinese official urges EU to raise target for emission cut

On the sidelines of the annual United Nations climate negotiations in Warsaw, a Chinese official has urged the European Union to raise its target for 20-percent greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2020 to further combat climate change. The European Environment Agency said last month that the EU had reduced its output of greenhouse gases by nearly 18 percent, thus seeing its 20-percent target within sight by 2020. "They are almost there. They are certainly going to overachieve their targets by 2020," Su Wei, deputy chief of the Chinese delegation and also director of the climate change department of China's National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference here on Thursday. "They call it ambitious, but I told my colleagues it's no ambition at all," Su said, urging Europe's developed countries to raise their targets for the pre-2020 period. The latest annual report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) found a gap of 8-12 billion tons of emissions per year between the pledges and the actual emission cuts that aim to avoid the potentially devastating effects of global warming. Su commented that the gap was not caused by the inaction from developing countries but by the inaction from developed countries. The gap would not have existed if developed countries were committed to a 40-percent cut from the 1990 levels by 2020, Su added, citing scientific projections.