China Is A Developed Nation But Pretending To Be Undeveloped To Get Climate Change Benefits

China is the most developed nation on Earth with 20 city municipality populations with over 7 million people. They also feed 1.4 billion people every single day. They feed them well and export food and many other products all over the world. They have a space program and intend to land men on the Moon soon. They have nuclear weapons and a powerful military apparatus. So why are they called a 'developing' nation? Regardless, we know why they call themselves that within the context of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change: More money.

China has been the chief beneficiary of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)whereby rich developed countries can invest in carbon-abatement projects in poor countries and get carbon credits that can be traded. China is also demanding billions in subsidies at the Copenhagen climate conference. Developing nations walked out of the talks at the conference today over the issues of how and who will pay for reducing global warming and which countries will benefit from the developments of new technologies.

The question about China's development status and the dispute at the climate conference has called into question the legitimacy of the entire U.N. process created as a way to help poor countries pay for the costly upgrades needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In theory, the credits are a way for rich countries to meet their domestic greenhouse gas commitment by paying for a carbon abatement project in a poor country that wouldn't have been built otherwise. But critics say the system has been distorted and abused, saying that China has sought to unfairly get investments for projects that fail to meet the U.N.'s standards because they would have been profitable to build anyway. (WSJ, 12/14/09)