John Kerry Grants the China Argument

Writing in an op-ed in the FT today Senator John Kerry (D-MA) concedes a political reality:

Today we need China to forgo the carbon-intensive industrial processes that fuelled the west in the 19th and 20th centuries and to pioneer the clean technologies of the 21st. Sceptics are right that if China does not reciprocate, our domestic efforts will be for naught.

China no doubt would respond, "When you forgo carbon-intensive industrial processes you let us know." Of more parochial interest, Kerry's statement that U.S. efforts will be for "naught" without Chinese reciprocation will surely be read back to him many times in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere.