The US and China are once more at loggerheads over climate change, with negotiators exchanging sharp words at talks in Tianjin this week.

 

The senior US delegate to the meeting threatened to take the country out of the UN negotiation track, prompting China to describe the US stance as “totally unacceptable.”

 

Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy special envoy for climate change, said the first three days of talks in Tianjin had yielded limited results because participants were revisiting old arguments rather than building on the accord reached at Copenhagen last December, the Guardian reported. 

 

He said it was “frustrating” that countries were “relitigating things that we more resolved over the course of the Copenhagen negations.”

 

Pershing said there was a concern that no agreement would be possible at the coming summit in Mexico.

 

Xie Zhenhua, the head of the Chinese negotiating team, said the US “has not provided financing or technology to other countries, yet it asks them to accept stringent monitoring and voluntary domestic actions. It's totally outrageous. It's quite unacceptable.”

 

While the meeting made some progress on issues such as forestry and technology transfer, discussions on the emission reduction targets were blocked by developing nations, the Guardian said.