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This article documents the debate over China's economic responsibilities for climate change mitigation and mitigation of climate change in China.
Both internationally and within the People's Republic of China, there has been an ongoing debate over China's responsibilities, particularly since 2006, when China surpassed the US as the country with the highest emissions rate for the main atmospheric gas in global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2)
The pros and cons
The experts who argue (as detailed below) that China should be spending more of its resources on mitigation, point out China's total emissions, the criticisms it has received from other developing nations and from its own citizens, the toll of pollution on China's gross domestic product (GDP), the lack of regulations strong enough to have an effect, the cumbersome delegation of responsibility for pollution problems, and China's refusal to commit to an emissions cap.
Experts who argue (as detailed below) that China should not be spending more, assert out that China is doing the most possible with its limited resources; they cite its low per capita emissions, the world-class scale of some of its mitigation efforts, its success at keeping emissions growth significantly less than GDP growth, the significant chunk of China's emissions that are created by multinational businesses in China, the opposition from its own provincial and local officials to carrying out the environmental regulations, the short time-length of China's CO2 emissions compared to the 200-year history of the industrialized nations' emissions, and the hypocrisy of criticizing China for attempting to catch up with the West through the same CO2-emitting practices with which the West developed.