Copenhagen: U.S., China Battling Over Emissions

Tuesday afternoon brought a showdown between the world's largest polluters, the United States and China, at the climate summit in Copenhagen, the Associate Press reports. Each country refuses to budge from its position on carbon emissions, and China continues to accuse the United States and other developed countries of trying to force the brunt of the new regulation on poor nations.

The United States has offered a 17 percent reduction from 2005 emission levels by 2020, which adds up to a 3 or 4 percent reduction from 1990 levels, the baseline year used by other countries in climate negotiations. Since China's economy is expected to double in size by 2020, the agreement it has proposed would allow its emissions to grow by half over the next decade, as opposed to doubling.

China opposes U.S.-led attempts to make its emissions cuts mandatory and open to international scrutiny, rather than leaving them voluntary. China is grouped with developing countries at the summit, but the United States does not consider it deserving of "climate aid" -- emissions allowances for developing nations that were the heart of the Kyoto Protocol.

"We still maintain that developed countries have the obligation to provide financial support," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said, adding that was "the key condition for the success of the Copenhagen conference."

As the two countries duked it out, summit leaders emphasized the necessity of coming to an agreement. "We expect them both to raise ambition level," EU environment spokesman Andreas Carlgren said of the United States and China. "Otherwise we won't be able to reach the 2-degree target," a reference to the goal of the climate summit: to agree on limits that keep the global temperature at 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

President Barack Obama and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will arrive in Copenhagen later this week.