Two quick points:

First, with respect to Round 5 (mitigation actions), there has certainly been a lot of negotiation going on about the emissions targets of both China and developing countries, although this issue didn’t turn out to be as central at Copenhagen as we might have expected. But it’s going to be very interesting to see how things pan out as developing countries list their commitments in an appendix later this month. Will China include its 40-45% carbon intensity reduction target, as you affirm? We’re following this quite closely but there is a big question mark. The world might not have secured its point on #5 yet.

Second, I’m not sure how comfortable with the idea of pitting China versus the rest of the world with this scorecard thought-experiment. When the world loses a point, China loses too because it is as vulnerable to climate change as anybody else, if not more! A point for China’s negotiators is not necessarily a point for China. While this may sound idealistic and international negotiators are certainly expected to watch out for their own country’s interests, we have to be careful not to suggest that climate mitigation is a win-lose situation.

Best wishes,
David

[JLW: Thanks for your excellent comments, David. We'll find out very soon on your first point, I guess. On your second, I fully agree. Perhaps I downplayed it a little too much, but the point of the exercise was to assess how China came out of Copenhagen given its position going in, not so much with respect to whether the fate of the Chinese as a civilization is better or worse off as a result. Although subjective, assigning some form of numerical weighting to the different complex issues was the only way to come up with some defensible overall picture. At the end of the day though, as you point out, we are all in the same space ship trying to navigate ourself out of this mess.]

Jonathan Watts, The Guardian: “Three European negotiators confirmed to me that Chinese negotiators not only blocked targets for themselves, but also a target proposed by Angela Merkel for developed nations to trim emissions by 80 percent by 2050.”
http://www.danwei.org/foreign_media_on_china/danwei_interviews_jonathan_wat.php

The Guardian: “Merkel wanted to set a target for developed nations to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, but in the last gasp, China declared this unacceptable. This astonished many of those present: China was telling rich nations to rein back on their long-term commitment. The assumed reason was that China will have joined their ranks by 2050 and does not want to meet such a target. “Ridiculous,” exclaimed Merkel as she was forced to abandon the target.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/20/copenhagen-climate-global-warming