This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. As heads of G20 governments meet in

Pittsburgh, the climate change debate has been largely missing. As President Obama

needles China on trade slapping a punitive tariff on Chinese

tires, a more tense climate change fight may be in the works as developing nations seek advantage. Pat Michael's senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute comments.

Much was made of China's announcement this week that they were going to do something about emissions, but when you read the fine print what

they said is they were going to reduce their emissions intensity. That's the

amount of carbon dioxide that a country produces per unit gross domestic product.

All countries that develop their economies reduce their emissions intensity.

All they really said was that we are going to continue to increase our carbon dioxide emissions

because we're going to grow our economy.

How was the media responded to this announcement? It was an amazing response that these pronouncements that

China was now taking leadership in emissions reduction, which was not at all the case. In fact, what China did was exactly what President

Bush said he was going to do, and quote, about climate change. He was going to reduce the United States carbon intensity by 25%.

But that was what would happen if we continue to do what we'd been doing for the last three decades.

And the Chinese are merely saying something very close to the same.

What is the significance of the discussions about climate change not being on the agenda relief at the G20. The G20 is kicked the

climate can down the road. It will get kicked further down the road at the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties

to the United Nations Climate Change Treaty, which takes place in Copenhagen in December.

I think the news now is that there will be no real news out of

Copenhagen except to say that all countries should sort of do their own thing on

climate change. They should do something.

What is the posture of the Obama administration going into Copenhagen?

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