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For years, the Obama administration prodded, cajoled and beseeched China to make commitments to limit the use of fossil fuels to try to slow the global effects of climate change.
President
Obama and other American officials saw the pledges from both Beijing
and Washington as crucial: China is the largest emitter of greenhouse
gases, followed by the United States.
In the coming years, the opposite dynamic is poised to play out. President Trump’s signing of an executive order on Tuesday aimed at undoing many of the Obama administration’s climate change policies flips the roles of the two powers.
Now,
it is far likelier that the world will see China pushing the United
States to meet its commitments and try to live up to the letter and
spirit of the 2015 Paris Agreement, even if Mr. Trump has signaled he
has no intention of doing so.
“They’ve
set the direction they intend to go in the next five years,” Barbara
Finamore, a senior lawyer and Asia director at the Natural Resources
Defense Council, based in New York, said of China. “It’s clear they
intend to double down on bringing down their reliance on coal and
increasing their use of renewable energy.”
“China
wants to take over the role of the U.S. as a climate leader, and
they’ve baked it into their five-year plans,” she added, referring to
the economic development blueprints drawn up by the Chinese government.
Even before the presidential campaign last year, Mr. Trump had made statements consistent with climate change denial, including calling climate change a hoax created by China.
He has also threatened to formally withdraw the United States from the
Paris Agreement. Since Mr. Trump’s election in November, senior Chinese
officials and leaders have been taking the high ground on the issue by
urging all countries, including the United States, to abide by their
climate commitments.
The biggest rhetorical turning point came in January, when Xi Jinping, China’s president, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the Paris Agreement was “hard won” and should remain in force.
“All
signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it, as this
is a responsibility we must assume for future generations,” he said.
Other Chinese officials at Davos repeated that message, including the energy minister, Nur Bekri, and top executives of state-owned enterprises.
In an interview before the recent climate conference in Marrakesh,
Chai Qimin, a climate change researcher and policy adviser, said that
policies adopted at a recent Communist Party meeting showed that China
“has attached ever greater importance to ecological civilization and
green development.”
“Everyone is taking this more and more seriously,” he added.
On
Wednesday, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a regularly
scheduled news conference in Beijing that all countries in the Paris
Agreement should “fulfill their commitments” and that China would stick
to its pledges “regardless of how other countries’ climate policies
change.”
Global Times, a state-run nationalist newspaper, used harsher language in an editorial chastising the Trump administration for “brazenly shirking its responsibility on climate change.”
“Washington
is obliged to set an example for mankind’s efforts against global
warming, and now the Trump administration has become the first
government of a major power to take opposite actions on the Paris
Agreement,” the newspaper said. “It is undermining the great cause of
mankind trying to protect the earth, and the move is indeed
irresponsible and very disappointing.”
The
editorial also questioned why China was making concessions on
fossil-fuel use when the United States was scrapping its promises: “How
can China, still underdeveloped, give away a chunk of room for
development, just to nourish those Western countries that are already
rich?”
Chinese
participation is critical for global efforts on climate change. With
its economic growth and rampant infrastructure construction, China
consumes as much coal as the rest of the world combined. The burning of
coal, which is at the core of the power, steel and cement industries in
the country, generates enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas. So environmental advocates and officials around the
world constantly say China must break its coal addiction.
But
unlike in the United States, Chinese leaders and senior officials have
consistently said that climate change is a serious problem and
acknowledged that changing the energy mix to move away from fossil-fuel
sources is important.
And because of its air pollution crisis,
China announced policies in 2013 to limit the use of coal in the
country’s three largest population centers. More recently, scientists
have said that there is a dangerous cycle at work: Weather patterns from climate change are exacerbating the smog.
“China
is cutting back on coal because of its lethal costs to human health as
well as its high carbon emissions, and plans to transition to the energy
sources of tomorrow, rather than yesterday,” said Isabel Hilton,
founder of Chinadialogue, a
prominent website that reports on environmental issues and policy.
“President Trump seems intent on reviving a 19th-century energy source
rather than pursuing the promise of the 21st century.”
Mr.
Trump’s pro-coal talk, and the unlikelihood that his administration
will pressure China to cut back on fossil fuels, might mean that
pro-coal interests in China, including among state-owned energy
companies, will try harder to push back against officials putting limits
on coal.
But
in recent years, coal consumption in China has declined slightly,
surprising many analysts and researchers. China’s economic slowdown —
from decades of double-digit annual growth to 6.7 percent last year
— has been a major factor. Analysts say there appeared to be an
increase in coal use during part of 2016 because of economic stimulus
policies, but preliminary statistics released in February indicate that
overall coal consumption declined last year compared with 2015.
Given
such numbers, researchers say China may reach a carbon emissions peak
in 2025 — five years ahead of its stated goal of 2030.
China
has also made pledges on the percentage of total energy that will be
generated by non-fossil-fuel sources, which include hydropower, nuclear
power, wind and solar. Mr. Xi has said that by 2030, 20 percent of
China’s energy will come from such sources. Chinese officials are now
grappling with the complex problem of getting energy generated by wind
and solar sources onto the grid and properly used.
“Trump’s
rejection of regulatory action on climate change creates a vacuum in
global climate leadership that China can now seize,” said Alex L. Wang, a
law professor and China environmental expert at the University of
California, Los Angeles. “In recent years, a variety of factors — crisis
levels of pollution, economic opportunities from green development and
concerns about the domestic risks of rising temperatures — have pushed
China to action on climate change. Trump’s actions don’t affect these
underlying drivers.”
In addition, China has said that it will put in place by the end of this year a national market for greenhouse gas quotas, commonly known as a cap-and-trade
program. It has experimented with seven such regional markets, and
there have been problems with them, but the government is determined to
set up a national program to put a price on carbon and impose a cost on
companies that generate large amounts of carbon dioxide, Chinese policy
advisers say.
China
appears to be overperforming on other targets besides its carbon
emissions peak date. It had stated that by 2020, 58 percent of its
energy would come from coal consumption. Official statistics indicate
China might meet that target early. Chinese officials now say they
expect to get the number down to 60 percent this year.
A report released in January
by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, based in
Ohio, said China was the world leader in domestic investment in
renewable energy and associated low-emissions-energy sectors, with $103
billion invested in 2015. And China is going global with that strategy —
last year, it invested $32 billion in large overseas deals involving
renewable energy.
“There
are clear differences between the Chinese approach and the Trump
administration on climate change,” Ms. Hilton said. “While Trump’s
administration seems to believe that action on climate change is a waste
of money and threatens jobs in the U.S., China sees investment in
climate-related action as essential to secure a safe and prosperous
future for Chinese citizens, as well as a strategic opportunity to
develop and supply the technologies of the future.”
Links
- Trump Signs Executive Order Unwinding Obama Climate Policies
- China Wants to Be a Climate Change Watchdog, but Can It Lead by Example?
- Climate Change May Be Intensifying China’s Smog Crisis
- Analysis Trump's order signals end of US dominance in climate change battle
- Sunshine state shuns solar as overcast New York basks in clean energy boom
- Trump moves to dismantle Obama's climate legacy with executive order
- Trump to sign executive order undoing Obama's clean power plan
- Why I think there's still hope for the climate in 2017
- Trump's transition: sceptics guide every agency dealing with climate change
- 'Trump's promises are empty': energy experts lay waste to proposals
- Biggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change
- US clean power plan setback 'will not affect Paris climate change deal'
- Coal crash: how pension funds face huge risk from climate change
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