China shook up the stalled Cancun climate talks on Monday by offering to submit to a binding UN resolution on carbon emissions. It could be a breakthrough moment in the drive to limit global warming and climate change. One blogger asked, “Did China just save the world?”

This is tricky, so let’s see if I can get this sorted:

Countries agreed to one set of (voluntary) emission limits under the Kyoto agreement. But they are supposed to commit to a second round when the initial goals expire in 2012

Countries agreed to a further set of goals at last year’s Copenhagen talks, but everyone went away disappointed.

Poor countries say the rich countries aren’t doing enough. Rich countries say they can’t afford to do more.

Some countries – Russian, Japan, and Canada – had actually been backing off from their commitments under the Kyoto accord.

China has surpassed the US as the biggest CO2 emitter on the planet (75th per capita, but the population is huge), but they say the US needs to take the lead.

The US said they wouldn’t budge until China agreed to external verification that they were meeting their obligations.

This week in Cancun, everyone feared the worst – nothing would get done. Again.

So that’s where the impasse lay… until this afternoon.

Now, China is offering to take the lead, and that might make all the difference.

Here’s what Reuters reports:

China’s offer to make its existing, domestic pledge to slow growth in carbon emissions binding under a U.N. resolution is a compromise it hopes will encourage developed countries to continue the existing Kyoto Protocol. “We can create a resolution and that resolution can be binding on China,” said Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s envoy for climate change talks. “Under the (U.N. Climate) Convention, we can even have a legally binding decision. We can discuss the specific form. We can make our efforts a part of international efforts.”

Chinese negotiators are also saying they’re willing to agree to outside verification, which had been a sticking point at Copenhagen.

There’s a lot to be cleared up there, between the concepts of “binding”, “voluntary”, and “legally binding”. And there’s still plenty of room for disaster.

But, as Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute put it, “This is a gamechanger.”

UPDATE:

In a direct email to RGB, Kate Sheppard, who covers energy and environmental politics for Mother Jones, told me,

So, I was also at that presser yesterday, and I didn’t really get the impression that the Chinese negotiator said much more than they had previously. They have said that they are open to the idea – if it respects national sovereignty, etc. There are two issues though to keep in mind – the Chinese tend to be VERY opaque in their presentations, and the translation yesterday left something to be desired (it was really hard to follow, and I’m pretty sure she was not translating everything). I would say that the Chinese negotiator seemed more open and flexible on emissions targets and MRV/ICA, but I’m not as confident from what I heard that this is a “game-changer” exactly. I guess we’ll have to see in the next few days though!

That said, the ability to have outside verification had been something the Chinese were very reluctant to allow, and that seems to have changed this week.

More COP15 Coverage:

Want to send your own message on climate to the world leaders at COP16 in Cancun? Tweet using the hashtag #tweetbottle, and Oxfam will print it out and deliver your message in bottle, using the planet-scale bottle in the picture above.