The West has long since ceased to be a major source of carbon emissions. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is now concentrated in China, India and other emerging nationsWhile The United States and Europe have taken the path of decarbonization. However, there remained an argument that Chinese leaders opposed to Westerners in international discussions, such as the COP climate conferences: historical responsibility.
It’s true, we Chinese today pollute more – it was Beijing’s classic position, which I summarize in my own words – because we have become by far the largest industrial power on the planet; however this is a recent fact; instead, the carbon emissions already accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities are still predominantly due to the West, from the English industrial revolution to the present day. So climate change occurs through the prevailing responsibility of Americans and Europeans.
China has often used this argument to put Western governments in the dock; and consequently also to ask that the West finance the effort of adaptation and transition to sustainability in the Global South. The Chinese statement was correct and supported by data until some time ago. Now it isn’t anymore. The People’s Republic has overtaken Europe not only for the amount of CO2 it emits today; it has exceeded it even if we do the historical calculation of emissions carbon deposits accumulated in the atmosphere in the past. The same Chinese overtaking will soon happen to the detriment of America.
This new fact is also fraught with consequences on a political level. The officialization of this news coincides with the re-election of Donald Trump, which will bring about changes in energy policy and environmental of the United States. Based on this data, Xi Jinping has lost the legitimacy to take the chair and give lessons to the polluting West, just when a leader who doesn’t want to listen to lessons is about to return to the White House.
The novelty of the China-Europe overtaking also in terms of “historical accumulation” was announced in an essay on the scientific site Carbon Brief. An article by. summarizes it in these terms New York Times: «For many years, wealthy places like the United States and Europe have borne the greatest historical responsibility for global warming and have been under pressure to stop it. The astonishing rise of China is reversing this dynamic. Over the past three decades, China has built more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants while its economy has grown more than 40-fold. The country has become by far the largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Still, the United States has pumped more total planet-warming pollution into the atmosphere since the early 19th century, in part because the country has been burning coal, oil and natural gas longer. But China is rapidly catching up. Last year, China has overtaken Europe as the second largest historical creator of CO2 for the first timeaccording to an analysis published Tuesday by Carbon Brief, a climate research site.”
Current trends leave no doubt that China will also leave America behind in this primacy. This happens despite the real effort of the People’s Republic to invest in clean energyin first place among these are nuclear, as well as solar and wind. Xi Jinping in his speeches often indicates the green revolution as a strategic goal. His country has achieved a dominant position in electric cars, batteries and solar panels. Nonetheless continues to be the largest consumer of coal and fossil energy.
He does not accept to submit to constraints, rules, limits set internationally, regarding the reduction of its emissions. In the environmental field, Xi has always been a “sovereignist”long before this term came into vogue in the West. However, he had the alibi of previous history: China had emerged only a few decades ago from a past of poverty, while it was the Westerners who had industrialized first. That alibi that is now falling apart.
The advent of Trump II January 20, 2025 will coincide with one crisis of the environmentalist agenda of the American Democratic Party. The most important and expensive of the laws passed by the Biden-Harris Administration in this field was l’Inflation Reduction Act. Officially, as the name implies, it aimed to reduce inflation. Actually it was an instrument of industrial policy which provided subsidies and public aid to all decarbonised activities or those that contribute to the sustainable transition: electric cars, renewable energy.
But it was calculated that if even the United States reached the “net-zero” goal (zero net CO2 emissions) instantlyand remain an economy that does not add CO2, at the cost of enormous economic sacrifices, global temperatures would not significantly reduce, due to the growth of emissions in China, India, and other emerging nations.
Not surprisingly during the election campaign Kamala Harris had stopped mentioning the Inflation Reduction Acthad repudiated the Green New Deal, had given up on banning combustion cars or fracking technology to extract gas and oil.
America will end up aligning itself with Xi Jinping’s pragmatism: the communist leader focuses on renewables and green technologies based on national priorities, without chasing a short-term abandonment of fossil energy, without sacrificing growth (which has already failed on its own, and for other reasons).
November 20, 2024, 6.15pm – edit November 20, 2024 | 6.32pm
