Todd Stern, US special envoy for climate change, said Wednesday that the country is pursuing a three-pronged approach to moving along global talks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a particular focus coming on bilateral agreements with China.

     Speaking at the Center for American Progress in Washington, Stern said
that these agreements between the two largest GHG emitters in the world could
cover clean energy arenas such renewable energy, carbon capture and
sequestration, and electric vehicles, among other areas.

     Stern’s comments come as US delegates are in Bonn, Germany through June
12 participating in UN-led climate talks that are set to conclude in December
in Copenhagen with a new treaty for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
The US never ratified Kyoto and thus, never agreed to make mandatory GHG cuts.

     "Certainly no deal will be possible if we cannot find a way forward with
China," Stern said, noting that China and other developing countries cannot
cling to their old principles of not agreeing to mandatory GHG cuts since this
attitude will not prove "fundamentally sustainable" in a world where low
carbon economies will replace high carbon economies. "Those who seek to hold
back the tides will lose out in the end," he said.

     "China and other developing countries do not need to take the same
actions we do but they do need to take significant national actions that they
can quantify and are ambitious enough to be consistent with science," he said.
"What China can do is not…stop growing but to grow smarter."

     Following his own advice "to get this damn thing started," Stern said
that he will be leaving June 6 for a visit to China along with John Holdren,
President Barack Obama’s science advisor, and David Sandalow, assistant
secretary for policy and international affairs at the US Department of Energy.

     Stern said he will also be accompanied by officials from the US Treasury
and Environmental Protection Agency although he did not name them
specifically. The Department of State would not provide any more details about
Stern’s trip.

     Stern said he does not expect to have a "big deliverable" from the trip,
but it would be "one piece of an extended set of interactions."

     Besides bilateral agreements with China and the Kyoto talks, Stern said
that talks within the Major Economies Forum context are also important. The 17
major economies participating in the forum are: Australia, Brazil, Canada,
China, the EU, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico,
Russia, South Africa, the UK, and the US.

     The next meeting will be in July in La Maddalena, Italy where the US will
engage again with China as well as other developing countries with high
emissions such as India, he said. "These meetings can’t pull a rabbit out of a
hat but they allow for candid dialog," he said.