Chinese Environmentalism

Of course, you believe in the Paris Climate Accord. Your tech overlords are committed to it, and you dutifully obey. 

Of course, you believe that China will eagerly comply with its promise, via the accord, to reduce its carbon emissions by 2030. And naturally you thrilled to the recent announcement that China will arrive at net-zero carbon emissions by 2060. That is, in four decades. 

I am confident that those who traffic in climate change hysteria, and that includes the best and the brightest of our tech oligarchs, actually believe it all.

And yet, the Financial Times reports this morning that China, now engaged in an economic recovery, is fueling its recovery by burning fossil fuels. It will come as a shock to our intellectual elites that China is not using very many renewables. This would seem to contradict the empty promises of the Green New Deal, namely that we can easily change over to renewable energy—sunlight and wind—while at the same time fostering economic growth.

The Financial Times reports:

China’s recovery has been led by the state-dominated industrial sector. Construction demand has spurred a rise in steel, aluminium and cement production of 13, 11 and 10 per cent, respectively, in October compared with the same period last year.

That puts China on course to account for nearly 60 per cent of global output in the three sectors, a rise of almost 10 per cent on last year. At the same time, exports have plummeted over the past five months, meaning the vast majority of the products being used domestically.

The surging domestic demand makes it near impossible for China to phase out fossil fuels, said Yang Muyi, an analyst at Ember, a climate think-tank in the UK.

Research led by Mr Yang found that a 5.8 per cent year-on-year rise in electricity demand from May to October was “simply too fast for new wind, solar, hydro and nuclear investment to keep pace”.

As a result, China is continuing to burn coal, a primary obstacle to its climate ambitions. The country will account for 53 per cent of global coal-generated power this year; use of the fossil fuel in the rest of the world is expected to fall 12 per cent.

To prop up economic growth, China has built roads, railways, airports and industrial parks in a more limited version of the carbon-intensive playbook it used to recover from the global financial crisis. “If we continue to rely on this model, it will be very difficult to reduce emissions,” Mr Yang said. “That’s why we need the next five-year plan to change to a more sustainable level of commodity consumption.”

It is slightly sobering to think that as China engages in an industrial recovery, we in America are about to hunker down again, with lockdowns and social distancing, to fight the virus.