The second focused on China’s position on global environmental issues. Although
a big power, China, it argued, was still very much a developing country with more
than 100 million people living in poverty and hundreds of millions more lacking the
basic standards of living that are taken for granted in the West. It would simply not
be fair for the Chinese to be denied the same benefits of development that people
in the developed world expected – particularly given that the developed world was
responsible for the overwhelming majority of carbon dioxide emissions since
Europe began to develop two centuries ago.