U.S. challenges China on carbon emissions

DOHA, Qatar -- The United States on Monday challenged China's view of how to split the burden of curbing carbon emissions, saying the rich-poor divide in past climate agreements has no place in a future pact to fight global warming.

The U.S. envoy to international climate talks in Qatar, Todd Stern, said the next climate deal must be based on "real-world" considerations, not "an ideology that says we're going to draw a line down the middle of the world."

Beijing wants to maintain a division between developed and developing nations, setting out softer emissions-cutting requirements for poorer countries. It notes that despite its roaring growth, millions of Chinese still live in poverty, and emission limits would slow the economic expansion that would improve their lot.

The climate pact is one of the key issues under discussion at the United Nations-led talks. Last year, governments agreed it should be adopted by 2015 and take effect five years later. The United States didn't join the only binding emissions agreement to date, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, because it covered only industrialized nations, not major developing countries like India and China, which is now the world's biggest carbon emitter.

"It's going to be an enormously challenging, and I think enormously important, task to get this agreement right," Stern said.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told reporters that people shouldn't expect the talks to yield success overnight.