China Joins The Climate Change Club, Leaving USA In The Cold

Posted on 22. Sep, 2009 by Ross in Asia, Energy News

Shhh… don’t tell anyone, but China’s about to complete a political blind-siding of epic proportions this week at the UN’s NY°C climate change summit in New York.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to announce massive and sweeping pollution commitments for the Eastern superpower, laying down carbon intensity targets, huge renewable energy projects, big increases in mandated industrial energy efficiency and cleaner transportation. With Europe already firmly onboard the Climate Change eco-train, China is showing its full readiness to take its seat at the top table of carbon reduction pace-setters.

To add the cherry to the Chinese cake, the announcement is also being made in a country paralysed by its own inability to pass effective climate change legislation through its corridors of power. Despite the engagement of Barak Obama with environmental issues, the President is currently a hapless spectator as the USA firmly cements its position as the world’s main carbon super-villain.

But how did it come to this? How did a nation once reviled by the West for its human rights abuses and totalitarian government come to be seen as a climate change hero, whilst the leading light of world democracy sees the faith instilled in it by the rest of the world smashed into pieces?

The simple answer: China fooled the US into thinking a deal was impossible, let them decide to plan their actions based on that assumption, then pulled the rug from under their feet.

树倒猢狲散 - When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter

At the beginning of 2009, the conventional wisdom was that Barak Obama was going to lead the USA towards a new commitment to preventing climate change, with strong reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. The optimism which accompanied his rise to the Presidency encouraged proponents of climate change legislation, and Obama was quick to engage with his environmental agenda.

Meanwhile China and India, the world’s two most populous nations on the cusp of fully industrialised economies, were believed to be the primary stumbling block on the road to a new international climate change treaty to replace the ageing Kyoto Protocol. Both nations seemed totally unengaged with the climate change agenda being forwarded by Europe and now the USA, claiming that industrialising their economies and increasing the living standards of their populations to Western levels was their main priority. They claimed that the West had no right to ask developing countries to sacrifice the development of poorer nations to compensate for the emissions generated both in the past and the present by the rich.

In a period of intense global economic hardship, this message sounded alarm bells in the USA and a handful of other developed nations such as Australia, Japan and New Zealand. With electorates far less convinced in the science behind global warming than in European countries, politicians prioritised the state of their economies over ideas of carbon reduction, seeing attempts to control CO2 levels as unnecessary hindrance upon economic recovery. Rather than see a new green economy as a source of new jobs and industries, the emphasis was on a loss of competitiveness against Chinese and Indian goods unburdened by carbon taxes.

Barak Obama tried to pressurise Congress into taking bold action by empowering the EPA to take action against carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act, but the American Clean Air & Security Act which resulted from the bickering on Capitol Hill was a messy affair full of concessions, conditions and trade barriers. Before the legislation was debated by the Senate, the White House’s attention focused towards the even more contentious healthcare reform package which Obama had also committed himself to, and the American Clean Air & Security Act is still yet to pass the next hurdle.

As a result, Obama will attend the Copenhagen Conference in December with no legislation with which to show the world America’s commitment to avoid global catastrophe from climate change. He will bring words and assurances, but after the US Congress voted to not even consider the Kyoto Protocol after Bill Clinton and Al Gore helped shape it, the world knows that it is not the US President who can deliver those promises.

骑驴找马 Riding a mule while looking for a horse

Whilst the American president’s momentum slowly stalled and his support for climate change legislation floundered against sceptical Republicans and self-interested coal-belt Democrats, China and India held a united front against Western pleas for meaningful engagement in the run up to Copenhagen. Whilst European nations queued up to announce targeted cuts in carbon emissions against 1990 of between 25-35%, the two developing behemoths refused to commit to stringent targets, unsure of the ability of targeting carbon levels whilst growing their economies and populations.

Their cause was aided by three main factors. Firstly, they were able to position themselves as champions of the developing world, leading calls for the developed economies to deliver even more strigent cuts to fight climate change, citing not only their current emission levels but their historic contribution to atmospheric pollution as the imperative for them to do so.

Secondly, the divisions in the developed world played to their favour. Whilst European carbon reduction targets were ambitious, other regions took a very different view on their climate change obligations. The USA’s cap-and-trade legislation (if ever enacted) only requires a 4% reduction on carbon emissions from Kyoto levels. Australia - the world’s worst polluter per capita - failed to pass climate change legislation to even return carbon emissions to 1990 levels. New Zealand aimed for an ambitious 20% cut, but with a 24% increase in emissions over the past two decades it is way off its Kyoto target of carbon neutrality. Japan angered the world with a target only 1% lower than its Kyoto target, whilst Russia - who’s heavy industry collapsed after the fall of communism, leading to a huge drop in emissions -plans to actually increase its emissions by 30% over the next decade.

Finally, China and India managed to successfully keep the human dimension in the climate change argument. Western nations have accepted the moral case presented by China and India that it is unfair to expect the world’s poor to remain in hunger and poverty in order to fight climate change. The right of developing nations to grow their economies - and in some cases, their populations - has gone largely unchallenged, despite both activities having enormous ramifications in the effort to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Once the US Congress had done enough damage to its country’s standing in the global environmental agenda, though, China finally broke rank with its sub-continental neighbour. The communist Goliath started talking openly at last about Chinese carbon intensity targets, renewable energy projects and energy efficiency legislation. Whereas before all the emphasis had been on China building a new coal power station every day, now wind farms had the potential to power the whole country, and Chinese car companies would be pioneers of the electric vehicle industry.

The change in stance re-energised environmentalists and renewed hope in the prospects of Copenhagen to deliver a meaningful commitment, but the damage had already been done. The US had become so convinced that China would not commit to anything which would sacrifice economic growth that it had decided to do the same, and in doing so prevented itself from engaging in a meaningful and honest way with the climate change debate.

China had emerged from the shadows as a fully paid-up member of the Climate Change Club, stealing a march on India which has since also softened its position with increased energy efficiency standards and new cap-and-trade legislation, but receiving far less international kudos for coming along second.

The USA by contrast is already talking about Copenhagen just being a stepping stone, not a final solution, downplaying its importance in an effort to play for time whilst its gets its house in order. The rest of the world is ready for commitment, though, and the USA is now failing to deliver any.

路遥知马力 Over a long distance, you learn about the strength of your horse

Criticism is likely to be laid at the door of the Chinese over providing carbon intensity targets rather than absolute carbon targets: however, given the moral acceptance for China and other developing nations to grow their economies to bring their people out of poverty, carbon intensity is the only realistic way of limiting the carbon produced during that growth.

The emphasis is now on China to do what no other developed nation has done before: to deliver economic growth whilst minimising the carbon dioxide that that growth would usually produce. Whether they can achieve this, or are even going to try, will only be seen over time. However, China is showing the willing to industrialise straight into a post-carbon economy.

That’s why China are now the superpower climate heroes. That’s why we may now be witnessing the final stage of a true shift in international power from West to East, and the long-awaited political maturation of the China nation.

Image of Hu Jintao by ΠΑΣΟΚ @ Flickr