Reposted from Forbes
Credulous Western environmentalists and government officials expect China to play a lead role in “combating” climate change, especially since President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. China’s trumpeted plans to reduce reliance on coal, however, conflict with data showing consumption and production trending up not down. China’s annual carbon dioxide emissions nearly tripled between 2000 and 2019, and now account for just under 30% of total global emissions which makes the country the largest emitter by far. The US, the second largest emitter, accounts for 14.5% of global emissions while India, the third largest, contributes 7.3%.
After some reduction in coal demand for a few years, demand increased from 2016 to 2019 by 3.3%, and its demand climbed in June this year to near its peak levels in 2013. In the first half of 2020 China approved 23 gigawatts-worth of new coal power projects, more than the previous two years combined; in 2018 and in 2019, China commissioned more coal power than the rest of the world combined.
As the single largest contributor of carbon dioxide emissions, China would be expected to be under intense international pressure to reduce them. But the country has a deft hand at international diplomacy. From the earliest negotiations in the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) beginning in 1994, the country has positioned itself as the defender of “Third World” interests, along with other large developing countries such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia.
The Kyoto Protocol, brought into force in 2005, established a two track system whereby the developed “Annex 1” countries adopted binding emission commitments while the developing “non-Annex 1” countries not only had no such commitments but were expected to be recipients of “climate finance” aid from the Annex 1 group for assistance in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Thereby, climate policy goals effectively got converted into an exercise in massive international income re-distribution.
As German economist and UN climate policy official Ottmar Edenhofer said in 2010, “Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated”
It is no surprise that the Republicans in the US Senate would never have approved of such an outcome early on, which explains President Obama’s adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 through the backdoor of defining US participation in the Paris Agreement as an “executive agreement” and not an international treaty. As part of this non-treaty, the developed countries were expected to sign on to annual transfers of $US100 billion as part of the “climate finance” leg of the Paris Agreement.
Perhaps most ironic in the celebratory announcements of the Paris Agreement to “save the planet” is the fact that the emission-curtailing commitments of the developing countries such as China and India mean little in practice. Green policy promises for future implementation are a costless way to extract diplomatic benefits at zero cost. As part of the Paris Agreement’s non-binding requirements, China promised to reaching peak emissions “around 2030” but offered no commitment regarding the level of that peak or the subsequent rate of emission decline.
Hardly noticed amidst the fanfare over China’s latest pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2060 is the body of research that show China’s emissions would peak anyway by 2030 under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. A survey of about 260 participants reported by Bloomberg resulted in 90% of the respondents saying that China’s carbon emissions will probably peak on or before 2030. An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance concluded that the commitment with respect to emissions intensity is actually less ambitious than BAU. A similar conclusion was found for India.
