China under Xi Jinping has made no secret of its ambition for world leadership. In one respect, however, the country’s global lead is not in doubt. China puts the rest in the shade with its impact on global warming, accounting for 26 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 15 per cent from America and just 1.1 per cent from the UK. Since 2011 China has consumed more coal than the rest of the world put together, and its coal consumption is still rising. This matters. China is like a giant cuckoo in the nest when it comes to climate change. Persuading people in the rest of the world, including the UK, to make sacrifices when the great emitter carries on regardless is hard. When this country boasts of its record in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which has been good, environmentalists point out that this has been achieved, in part, by outsourcing polluting industrial production to China. There were hopes among campaigners that China was beginning to change its ways. Last autumn the president committed the country to achieving net zero emissions by 2060, and the hope was that in the first five-year plan since then China would promise a peak in carbon emissions between now and 2025. In this year of COP26, which the UK is to host in November, it would have been a breakthrough moment. It did not happen. Under its five-year plan, published on Friday, it is clear emissions will continue to increase unless economic growth slows dramatically. The can was kicked down the road. Genuinely green growth in China is some way off and the world will suffer the consequences.
Times 7th March 2021 read more »
China — by far the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gas — has held back from a commitment to cut emissions within five years, in a step that has dismayed environmentalists. The country accounts for 26 per cent of global emissions, compared with 15 per cent for the US and about 1 per cent for the UK. President Xi Jinping said last year that China would reach net-zero emissions by 2060, and climate experts hoped his new five-year plan, which sets out the nation’s strategy from 2021 to 2025, would reveal how that would be achieved. Li Keqiang, the prime minister, was widely expected to announce that it would reach peak carbon emissions by 2025 when he unveiled the five-year plan to the National People’s Congress on Friday. Instead he gave details of an industrial strategy that leaves China reliant on burning coal.
Times 7th March 2021 read more »