China Sets Up U.S. Conflict By Ruling Out New Climate ‘Regime’

China Sets Up U.S. Conflict By Ruling Out New Climate ‘Regime’

China, India, South Africa and Brazil said a climate deal planned for 2020 won’t be a “new regime,” threatening confrontation with the U.S. which wants to eliminate a firewall between developed and developing nations. The four nations reined in expectations for the Durban Platform, a mandate agreed last December at United Nations treaty talks in the South African city that said countries aim to hammer out by 2015 a new deal to fight climate change that will enter force in 2020, in a statement released following a meeting of the so-called Basic bloc in Beijing.

“The Durban Platform is by no means a process to negotiate a new regime, nor to renegotiate, rewrite or reinterpret the convention and its principles and provisions,” the countries said, referring to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The outcome of the discussions are governed by “in particular the principles of equity.”