Essay by Eric WorrallChinese Communist mouthpiece Global Times has accused the West, and the USA in particular, of poisoning and politicising global climate cooperation.
Global Times: Western Countries are Retreating from Climate Change PromisesBy GT staff reporters Published: Aug 26, 2022 12:41 AM
The record heat waves, alongside an energy crisis partly caused by the US-instigated Russia-Ukraine crisis, have forced some European countries to row back on their climate goals. Meanwhile, in the US, one of the world’s biggest emitters, climate change has descended to an issue for partisan struggle, and most recently, a topic to demonize China after Beijing suspended communication on this matter with the US after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to the island of Taiwan.
…
In the latest case, the city of Copenhagen has given up on a long-term goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. “As things look now, we cannot achieve our ambitious climate target,” the head of the city municipality’s elected technical and environmental committee, Line Barfoed, said to Danish media on Monday.
The Denmark city’s decision was made after several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands already or are planning to return to coal to generate electricity,
after they felt the pinch from energy crisis followed by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and adding insult to injury, Europe’s worst drought in 500 years.
A lot of what the CCP has said on this occasion is true, except in my opinion the part about China ever taking climate action seriously.
If climate action was a priority for Chinese leaders, in my opinion they wouldn’t be building loads of coal plants, and they wouldn’t have used the Taiwan dispute as an excuse to suspend talks. The CCP would have accepted John Kerry’s plea to keep climate talks disconnected from other political issues.
One silver lining to this mess, as global climate cooperation dissolves into a desperate Western scramble for coal and gas, and edgy geopolitical point scoring between China and the USA, the day when nobody even pretends anymore to take climate action seriously draws ever closer.
Western countries backpedal blustery promises on climate change; US poisons global cooperation by politicizing the issue
By GT staff reporters Published: Aug 26, 2022 12:41 AM
The record heat waves, alongside an energy crisis partly caused by the US-instigated Russia-Ukraine crisis, have forced some European countries to row back on their climate goals. Meanwhile, in the US, one of the world’s biggest emitters, climate change has descended to an issue for partisan struggle, and most recently, a topic to demonize China after Beijing suspended communication on this matter with the US after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to the island of Taiwan.
…
In the latest case, the city of Copenhagen has given up on a long-term goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. “As things look now, we cannot achieve our ambitious climate target,” the head of the city municipality’s elected technical and environmental committee, Line Barfoed, said to Danish media on Monday.
The Denmark city’s decision was made after several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands already or are planning to return to coal to generate electricity, after they felt the pinch from energy crisis followed by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and adding insult to injury, Europe’s worst drought in 500 years.
