The countries committed to permanently ending fossil fuel use now far outnumber those against. Their problem? Their chief organising conference, the 30-year-old COP conferences, comes with vetoes from the petro-states. This year, 1,600 fossil industry lobbyists attended, and they managed to get any mention of fossil fuels scrubbed from the final agreement.
This ridiculous state of affairs can’t continue, and this is a classic move to break the deadlock. Sideline COP & the petrostates, by creating an alternative, they don’t have power in.
That’s because the west exported all of its manufacturing there.
China is among the highest in raw carbon emissions, but has an extremely low per-capita emissions rate. Compared to the US, who’s per-capita emissions rate is among the highest in the world.
Plus, China is making a sharp pivot towards the development of renewable energy, electric vehicles, and transit oriented development.
And the global supply chain its been building, whatever one might think of the Belt and Road initiative, allows them to cheaply sell things like solar panels and rail infrastructure back to the countries supplying them with raw materials. Allowing those countries to electrify in such a way as to skip over more carbon heavy forms of power generation.
There’s context here, and saying “But China burns so much coal!” doesn’t tell the whole story. They’re not burning it in a vacuum, for funsies.