Last week Japan said that any climate agreements that they make or honor will have to be accompanied by other major Asian countries, like China and India. This comes from the new government who are certainly staking their claim to policy and setting new economic and financial goals after a rough year there. Perhaps they were setting the tone for the general debate.

In past posts I have talked about the state of major players like the U.S. (not committing to anything officially right now), the EU (leading the way with both commitments and calls to commitments for climate change measures and emissions reductions), Russia (still claiming exemption and committing to basically growth not cuts) and China (making steps and seeming to take a lot of its cues from the EU).
Beyond that, the major line seems to be that rich, developed, industrialized countries want to make emissions cuts that will be meaningful but not harm their economies (reasonable in theory and negotiation, but perhaps difficult in practice) and developing nations want money from rich countries to offset the climate change problems caused by their development- as well as room to continue economically and industrially developing themselves.

Somewhere in the middle of those two states are China and India. Why the middle? Because while they are recent to the developed world (industry-wise), they have large populations and create high emissions. China is now the number one emitter of carbon emissions in the world. Where do they stand in the cut emissions vs. room for growth debate and call for commitments?

Denmark is calling them out, saying that any meaningful emissions cuts agreement depends on China and India, according to a Reuters report today.

Denmark’s climate and energy minister, Connie Hedergaard, a key player in the work to build a next-step after the Kyoto Treaty, has asserted that a new global treaty is dependent on China and India agreeing to CO2 emissions cuts. She also said that Western countries will need to pay to help other countries cut their emissions.

"We will have to have a deviation from business as usual by China," said Hedegaard.

She added that all emerging economies also need to be on board, because while developed nations are the acknowledged largest contributors, developing countries also contribute meaningfully to the emissions total.

China needs to identify a date by which its emissions would start to fall, the minister said, adding this date should not be too distant. "The sooner the better," she said.

The recent G20 meeting in London found China and India unwilling to talk about how to best deal with global warming and climate change issues. This may be because it was finance ministers and the meeting was not geared at emissions, so it could be a largely diplomatic move, but according to

Hedegaard, there is no time to lose, either in discussing it or making action happen.

Controversial cap and trade plans are popular with developed governments because they shift the cost to the private sector- developing nations remain suspicious of the plans.

Regardless, Denmark’s call for China and India to make commitments around emissions cuts is one piece of a greater puzzle- the entire world literally needs to agree to something at Copenhagen, something meaningful, and then do it.

I would be most encouraged to see Denmark and other countries focusing on the “We are doing this…” for now, leave the requests and calls for commitments from others to the Copenhagen summit.