Jockeying for Copenhagen

Senator John Kerry is trying to keep climate change at the center of discussions between the Obama Administration and China.  The recent meetings in Washington covered a broad range of topics and was overtly designed to avoid basing the relationship on discrete issues, whether it’s human rights, or monetary policy or the environment.

Kerry seems to have a different view in setting climate change as above all else:

“On climate change, perhaps the single greatest challenge we face, more could have and should have been achieved,” Kerry said at a National Press Club luncheon.

Still, Kerry tries to be modest in his expectations as to what China needs to do:

“They don’t have to do the same thing, but they have to show their good faith with major reductions to get them on a path where we all join up somewhere down the near-term future,” he said. “That’s the key to success in Copenhagen.”