US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday urged Beijing to cooperate on climate change, calling a safe environment a basic human right.
Speaking at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, Pelosi continued the theme of her five-day China trip — that combating global warming represents a new challenge that both governments must tackle jointly.
“We are all in this together,” Pelosi told an audience of about 200 students and faculty who applauded enthusiastically throughout the 45-minute session. “The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries.”
Pelosi’s trip has been notable for skirting human rights and the fierce public criticisms she has frequently leveled at the authoritarian government.
The trip comes as US President Barack Obama’s administration emphasizes climate change as a new area where the two governments can broaden already wide-ranging engagement. The two countries are the biggest emitters of the carbon gases that are causing warming temperatures. Both governments are staking out positions ahead of a meeting late this year in Copenhagen that will try to forge agreement on targets and steps to reduce carbon emissions.
In a meeting on Wednesday, the head of China’s national legislature, Wu Bangguo (吳邦國), told Pelosi that climate change was a common challenge and that Beijing stood ready to work with Washington.
Turning around her usual criticisms about human rights, Pelosi linked global warming to environmental justice, saying the right to a clean environment is also a human right.
“I do see this opportunity for climate change to be ... a game-changer,” she said at Tsinghua. “It’s a place where human rights — looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment — are a human right.”
To achieve this, Pelosi said governments would have to make decisions and choices based on science.
“They also have to do it with openness, transparency and accountability to the people,” she said. “Everyone has to have their situation improved by it.”
In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes.
“We have so much room for improvement,” she said. “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility.”
Pelosi, who arrived on Sunday, brought with her five members of a House committee on energy policy and global warming. A bill that would impose the first US limits on greenhouse gas emissions was approved by a House committee last week, a step being considered by the full House later this year.
Pelosi’s visit is part of a flurry of contacts between Washington and Beijing that highlight their wide-ranging cooperation on issues including North Korea’s nuclear program and combating the global economic slump.
Next week, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner travels to Beijing.
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
TIGHT CAMPAIGN: Although Harris got a boost from an Iowa poll, neither candidate had a margin greater than three points in any of the US’ seven battleground states US Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in the final days before the election, as she and former US president and Republican presidential nominees make a frantic last push to win over voters in a historically close campaign. The first lines Harris spoke as she sat across from Maya Rudolph, their outfits identical, was drowned out by cheers from the audience. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters
Pets are not forgotten during Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, when even Fido and Tiger get a place at the altars Mexican families set up to honor their deceased loved ones, complete with flowers, candles and photographs. Although the human dead usually get their favorite food or drink placed on altars, the nature of pet food can make things a little different. The holiday has roots in Mexican pre-Hispanic customs, as does the reverence for animals. The small, hairless dogs that Mexicans kept before the Spanish conquest were believed to help guide their owners to the afterlife, and were sometimes given
RSS