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With climate treaty negotiations expected to intensify next year, China is signaling that it may soon set the timetable for hitting an eventual peak in its emissions of carbon dioxide, the most important human-generated greenhouse gas. The signals came on Monday from Xie Zhenhua, China’s lead climate treaty negotiator, speaking at a German climate conference. Here’s coverage by Xinhua, China’s government-echoing “news” agency:

China might announce a “peaking year” for its carbon emissions in the first half of 2015 when the country would present its contributions to address global climate change, said China’s chief climate negotiator on Monday. China was trying to present its “national determined contributions” in the first half of next year. Among the contributions, “the peaking year might be included,” Xie Zhenhua, deputy chief of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters during an informal ministerial conference in Berlin. The annual conference, known as Petersberg Climate Dialogue [link], was organized by the German federal government and attended by some 35 ministers this year. [Read the rest.]

It’s interesting to note that the website Responding to Climate Change, also posting from the meeting, used the word “capping” where Xinhua used “peaking.”

A peak (as in “peak travel”) can be reached without a binding cap, and the difference is not merely semantic, especially in the endless climate standoff between the United States and China over who goes first, and when. (My bet is that peak is more accurate; I’d love to hear from any Chinese speakers who were there or have access to the transcript.) [It turns out I was right.]

It is great to see China continuing to pursue policies that cut emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of economic output. But it’s also important not to over-inflate expectations about what its leaders are willing to do given that sustaining the growth of China’s middle class remains a top priority. At the Berlin meeting, Xie stressed that China still sees itself as a developing nation, with different obligations on greenhouse gases to those of developed countries.

The statements by Xie, who has led China’s delegation in climate negotiations for many years, carry far more weight than those of government advisers, whose comments about a cap coming in the country’s next five-year plan were wishfully spun in June.

It’s encouraging to see many countries, and outside analysts, focusing on strategies for accelerating a shift toward ending emissions growth that move away from the failed idea of a binding global cap.

This is in sync with the invaluable “Blueprint to End Paralysis Over Global Action on Climate” written by former senators Tim Wirth and Tom Daschle for Yale Environment 360. I wish more climate campaigners would read that piece.