Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
JUNE 16, 2021
By Paul Homewood
This bit of news may all sound a bit arcane, but it is actually hugely significant:
Authorities have limited the scope of a carbon-trading scheme as driving growth takes priority
China’s top economic planners have put the brakes on attempts by environmental officials to reduce carbon emissions as driving growth takes priority over meeting climate targets for now, according to people familiar with the matter.
Officials at China’s main economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, have limited the initial scope of a national carbon-trading system, which is set to go into full operation later this month after pilot projects in eight Chinese cities.
The economic planning office has also gained the upper hand in negotiations over drafting a detailed road map to fulfil leader Xi Jinping’s pledges to achieve a peak in carbon-dioxide emission before 2030 and net zero emissions by 2060, the people said.
The environmental ministry has risen in prominence over the past decade and had in recent months appeared to be newly empowered to exert more influence, but the recent developments show the economic agency, which sets China’s energy and emissions targets, still has greater clout.
The dynamic of competing environmental and economic priorities is hardly unique to China. Lawmakers in the U.S. have blocked attempts to pass a national cap-and-trade market for carbon emissions over concerns about the impact on businesses and the economy, although California and states in the northeast have adopted their own systems.
China’s actions are being closely watched as the world’s largest carbon emitter. Mr. Xi has said that China will reach a peak in its carbon emissions before 2030, but he hasn’t elaborated on how the country will achieve that goal.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has urged his counterpart Xie Zhenhua to pursue more ambitious climate actions in the near term, but hasn’t said specifically what he is urging China to do. Leaders of the Group of Seven nations are expected to discuss putting pressure on China to reduce its financing for coal projects overseas when they meet this weekend in the U.K.
After Mr. Xi’s pledge in September, one of his top lieutenants, Vice-Premier Han Zheng, called in October for environmental officials to accelerate the launch of a national carbon market and formulate a carbon road map, signalling to Chinese policy observers that they would be charged with drafting the plans for meeting the targets.
But in March when China’s cabinet enumerated the bodies charged with drafting the road map, the economic planning agency was listed first—not the environmental officials. Beijing also set up a group of high-level party members last month to cut across bureaucratic structures, issue guidance and oversee the road map. Three out of the five members of its leadership were senior economic cadres.
Separately, when the environmental ministry released the initial rules for the emissions trading system in December, they were more limited than initially proposed.
The scheme will, for instance, involve only about 2,200 companies in the power sector, which is responsible for an estimated 30% of China’s total emissions, instead of the 6,000 companies from eight sectors that were in the initial proposal.
Rather than the absolute caps on emissions proposed by environmental officials, Chinese companies will start off with relative allowances, using benchmarks based on previous years’ performances, giving them more wiggle-room.
Behind the scenes, economic planners had weakened provisions of the scheme, fearing the potential impact on growth, according to people familiar with the matter.
What it tells us is that the environmental lobby in China is toothless, the proverbial paper tiger.
I have always had doubts about the power and independence of the green lobby there. After all, we know that no organisation is truly independent of the state, or at least not for long! This news does indeed confirm that they are little more than window dressing, there to impress western governments than wield any real power.
When the chips are down, China will always put the economy first.
A green lobby of the CCP is for show. Propaganda is the point. Of course it would take the priorities of the dictatorship.
China sees the fear of CO2 as the stealth weapon that will enable them to take over the world by causing their economic competitors to undermine themselves. To their credit. they understand that there’s no middle ground between China first and China last.
and meanwhile its a great cashcow making PV and selling rare earth magnets etc for turbines
laughing all the way to their banks
That is the purpose of the Chinese environmental movement, to see that the West decarbonizes, with vague promises in return.
“..great cashcow making PV”
Well yes but the main point the green west buries is that the ‘great reset’ will result in massive transfers of western currency to China in return for its manufacture of massive numbers of cheap solar panels, cheap solar control systems, copper wire, electrical enclosures and similar result for wind turbines copied (transferred) from the German originals. Maybe the ‘west’ intends to continue degrading its currencies with continued debt and money printing?
Time to GET OFF this green insane road to nowhere.
Or once they commit to and obey an international agreement involving carbon tax/expense on Western nations but exempting Eastern nations, the agreement will soon adjust to reduce/eliminate the exemption.
The Chinese leadership will only honor an international agreement that’s in their own best interest. Do you really think that in decades when the exemption has expired and the West has succumbed to irrelevancy, China will replace the thousands of coal plants they have built and continue to build with unreliable renewables? It may just be these coal plants that keep the Chinese alive in the event of a real climate disaster like an impact event, super volcano or another ice age, all of which have occurred countless times in the past, while catastrophic warming caused by CO2 never has and never will occur.
When Trump really started sanctioning China we had a pandemic 🤔
I was suggesting exactly what you said.I was suggesting that China doesn’t need anyone to say so either. Duh.
IMO, a better title would be ‘China puts economy first, environment last’.
That would be an appropriate title, only if you believed that reducing CO2 emissions is in any way related to protecting the environment.
Your forgetting about particulates and Freon. And CO2 isn’t close to having much effect in it’s present concentration either.
So business as usual then
I don’t believe the Chinese consider CO2 and climate change to be high priority but air pollution and water pollution are of concern since they live in it.
They see the same data that we all see here at WUWT. To think they are not aware of the “adjustacene”, the Climate Gate CRU hacks and the state of Western peer- review climate science is patently naïve.
However, what is truly amazing is that the USA would make CAGW and de-carbonization the main pillar of its foreign policy. I suppose you might do that if you lived under the illusion that the entire world gets its knowledge from CNN and sites like WUWT don’t exist. (Or you were being well paid to do it.) (lol)
I wish the environmental lobby in the US wasn’t so crazy. I think there is a reasonable balance between care for the environment and promotion of growth and the balance is tilted way off kilter in favor of the environment.
I enjoy clean air and water but the wetland regulations etc. are crazy. Don’t even get me started on global warming s*#t.
What I fail to grasp is why concern for the environment (by the green activists) is focused laser-like on CO2. It’s non-sensical… oh…..right……
Bruce, it’s also only the green activists that get away with chopping up or frying our flying friends, and I have not way how they reconcile that.
But the beauty of that is that it allows you to override all other environmental concerns. If you are reducing CO2, you can:
1] Clear forests for biofuels (eg: palm oil plantations)
2] Clear forests for biomass (burn wood in place of coal)
3] Kill raptors and remove mountain tops for wind energy
4] Despoil deserts for solar panels
5] Develop the fragile Arctic for LNG (the transition fuel)
6] Frack for natural gas (transition fuel)
7] Dam rivers for clean hydropower (eg Quebec)
8] Nullify endangered species laws for essential rare earth and Lithium mines.
9] Off shore factories to less environmentally friendly nations (then protest the shipping company’s carbon footprint).
10] Etc, etc, etc …
And the real beauty of the system is what I call Promote & Protest. Environmental groups raise tons of money promoting the benefits of the new technology, then when it goes too far, they raise money to protest it. Bill McKibben is a perfect example of this with biomass. So you get non-stop well funded circular activism… a perpetual motion machine of sorts. (lol)
Here they cut down a forest for solar panels. WTF?
I enjoy clean air, I also enjoy feeding my family.
When the two come in conflict, I will always choose feeding my family.
Lloyd,
They used to call it conservation, i.e., conservation of resources towards the betterment of mankind, as opposed to environmentalism towards the detriment of mankind.
Legitimate environmental pollution was cleaned up in the 1970s, with a final pass at the remaining issues in the early 1980s.
For real pollution in the US, there is not a whole lot to do and there has not been for a very long time. Most environmentalists have never seen real pollution, as it was all cleaned up long before they were born.
As an aside:
Witness the stock photo of a steam cloud coming out of a chimney. The photograph is *always* back-lit, making the pure white cloud seem dark and menacing. The picture always appears as the feature photo in articles about “pollution” and the environment.
My Take: If they had pictures of real pollution, they would not have to resort to photoshopped pictures of steam clouds.
I grew up within site of a paper factory in the ’50s. The smoke that came out of its chimney was pitch black. And, the factory dumped tons of waste pulp right into the river next to it resulting in a multi colored sudsy mess- so the whole town smelled like an outhouse in the summer. That was pollution. Nothing was alive in the river. The did clean it up but then moved south. Now, no pollution and no factory.
And wet lands in the cities just promotes mosquitos.
A better title:
China is more efficient at managing growth and climate propaganda
Biden borrows
“Biden steals” — has no intention of ever paying anything back.
Doesn’t China have a semi literate child with anger issues they should be taking instructions from, like we in the West like to do?……
No they fat shame her instead
I would humbly point out that President Trump was correct:
China benefits from the Idiocratic climate policies being pushed by the “climate consensus”. And that nothing either China or the Idiocratic West does will have any meaningful impact on climate, for good or bad.
China has lacked massive policy failure since the Cultural Revolution while the U.S. and EU are still in the process of building up theirs. It takes time, just ask the Iranian people or the historians of the Dark Ages.
What the h*ll does that mean?
China lacks policy failure.
The US and the EU have massive Policy Failure in abundance.
Look at heavy industry, manufacturing, and especially environment. Massive policy Failures abound. Do not even get me started on immigration.
ResourceGuy points out that China will not compete against the US and EU on a level field until they embrace Policy Failure as fully as the West has.
{That is one way of looking at it, I suppose.}
It means get an education.
Unqualified progress: one step forward, two steps backward.
Yes, they nearly lost momentum with one-child (saved by diversity – over 1 billion people). They hope that selective-child will be a less wicked final solution and socioeconomic burden. That said, it’s an evolutionary process. Show me the fitness function.
The one child policy is still a huge strain on China.
They don’t have enough young people to support their rapidly aging population.
Maybe they’ll import people from poor countries! 🙂
We can send them all the current graduates of Yale, Harvard and the other Ivy League schools.
Maybe they listened to Paul Ehrlich too much.
18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, expect more this year | American Enterprise Institute – AEI
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
and while The west is fixated on Climate, are building, shipping selling vast amounts of cheap, designed to fail, junk.
Brain dead western Govs love that because it not only lowers their CO2 emissions but, the cheap goods leaves more money in folks’ pockets that Gov takes off them (less painfully than otherwise) in tax
It is exactly why in UK and Europe, farming was ‘subsidized’
Govs would receive epic backlash for taxing food, so tried to make it cheap and get their tax revenue from other consumer expenditure.
Hence = Value Added Tax (UK) or General Sales tax ‘most everywhere else
Farming became a total mess because the merchants (cronies), in the feed, fert, machinery and chemicals trades simply lifted their prices and hoovered up all the money the farmers ever got.
Hence why Nitrogen fert in the UK was always £100 per tonne more than even in Europe, while Roundup in the UK was Ten Times the price it was in subsidy free Aus and NZ and a really basic 4WD little 80HP tractor in the UK costs as much as a Tesla!
While the going is good, the Chinese are going hell-4-leather until folks in the West wake up and realise what’s happening.
Then watch all that cheap shyte turn into very expensive shyte. Overnight
Just like Neodymium did a few years back
Went up in price by a factor of 20 simply when Enercon said they were gonna, and did, use it in their Government Mandated (read= people were coerced into buying) wind turbines
Since the US Dollar is the world’s reserve currency, our monetary system actually requires trade deficits. The cheap imports disguise inflation. Any money that flows back buys stocks and real estate which gives the illusion of prosperity or US Treasury bonds which lower interest rates and allows more government spending without tax hikes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
It’s not the monetary system that requires a trade deficit. It’s our budget deficit that requires a trade deficit.
We have to borrow money from other countries to cover the budget deficit.
This causes the value of the dollar to fall.
This causes the apparent cost of US goods to fall, and the cost of foreign goods to rise.
This is what causes the trade deficit.
Fix the budget deficit, and the trade deficit fixes itself.
Until the budget deficit is dealt with, all the other band aids have no long term affect.
The US public (including us and our IRAs) holds over 75% of US federal debt.
“Kevin
Since the US Dollar is the world’s reserve currency,…”
It is at the moment but don’t expect that to last forever.
True. What does the changeover look like, other than massive investment in dollar based assets (which will then comprise foreign purchase of US production and assets by definition).
China never intended to ruin their economy through insanely expensive and unneeded CO2 mitigation to “save the world”.
China’s plan has always been to let Western countries destroy THEIR economies by wasting $trillions on inefficient, unreliable, intermittent and expensive wind/solar grids thus making them energy poor, and their goods and services uncompetitive.
Meanwhile, China is investing $billions on developing next generation Thorium MSR nuclear reactors capable of producing unlimited amounts of: safe, clean, inexhaustible, efficient, reliable, stable and dirt-cheap power at one-tenth the cost/kWh, 24/7/365.
When China starts their next-gen nuclear rollout program, they’ll build turn-key pre-fabricated modular nuclear power plants that can completed with 10 weeks per plant.
Historians will be flabbergasted as to why so many Western governments seemed to believe CAGW was an “existential threat” and destroyed their economies and put their citizens through so much hell on the most expensive hoax in human history…
Amazing…
Wuhan Variant made in China virus destroys economies faster than CO2’s theorists. [With apologies to original post author for my comment including the following tangent: Anybody else seen the latest tidbit about pandemic inspired transparent plastic shields put up being suspected of un-expectedly making things worse? Believe in The Science we’ve been told – well, just not that stuff about chromosomes ….]
CAGW is a complete hoax and won’t kill anyone.
CO2 is essential for photosynthesis so all life on earth would die if levels fall below 150ppm
All life actually thrives at higher CO2 concentrations.
What has the potential to kill millions of people is economic and electrical grids collapsing if too much money is wasted building stupid wind/solar farms, and if they comprise too much of the grid capacity with insufficient natural gas/coal/nuke backup.
The ¨Deep State¨ meaning the British Empire, is floundering. The attempt to expand NATO, British-led as NATO Chief Stoltenberg gushes, to the East China Sea, this time to enforce ¨carbon credits¨ instead of opium like the last time, shows that such credits are indeed a financial drug.
China has not forgotten the opium wars that looted them.
Talk about taking a perfectly useful element Carbon, and processing it into an addictive substance, and using gunboat diplomacy!
Meanwhile the new space station is bustling with activity.
I have to give you credit, no matter the topic, you can always twist it back to you favorite boogey man: The British.
“Meanwhile the new space station is bustling with activity.”
Yeah but don’t forget the role British banksters played in the development of the space station 😉
You mean the Beagle?
Britain leads NATO? Are you completely delusional?
Yes he is – a completely delusional and monomaniacal crackpot. Nothing he ever writes makes sense and always seems to involve some crazy conspiracy theory where Britain is secretly ruling the world as some sort of evil empire. Best to just ignore his insane ramblings really.
Just quoting Stoltenberg recently. The BoJo New Global Britain is baaack!
Anyway, it never went away.
There is great delusion in the deliberations. The G7 was, well, rather revealing.
MarkW, you’ve surely read enough of his rants by now to know the answer to that question is definitively in the affirmative.
Looks like the entire 77th Brigade is in a twist – LOL!
Gosh and golly. Those Chi-Coms are surely just misunderstood. We should reengineer our entirely economy and “rethink” (reduce) our standard of living. Once we take the moral high ground and show them we’re serious, they’ll come around. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The article puts it in perspective:
“The dynamic of competing environmental and economic priorities is
hardly unique to China. Lawmakers in the U.S. have blocked attempts
to pass a national cap-and-trade market for carbon emissions over
concerns about the impact on businesses and the economy”
China is implementing a slimmed down carbon trading scheme next month. The US doesn’t have a national one at all. Neither does Australia.
Neither does China, what they have is a propaganda scheme.
but many USA states have passed net free bills- unfortunately
Yeah, sure they are. You’re such a credulous child. Good for the US and Australia.
Pay no attention to those lies behind the curtain.
This time China actually means it.
Yeah … for sure and no one was doing ‘gain of function‘ in Wuhan, were they?
Don’t worry, Australia does not need a carbon tax, it’s shutting down conventional energy generation in favour of unreliables, exporting our coal, ore and gas reserves, then importing products at greatly inflated prices.
Australia; She’ll be right one day, screwed the next!
Dear gawd … truly? How do the politicians who create these nightmares get elected? Are people really that self destructive?
It’s not that people are self destructive so much as they’re uninformed/misinformed on the issues (and too many of them aren’t that bright to begin with) yet get a vote anyway.
Imagine how stupid the common person is,
then remember half are stupider than that.
George Carlin …
The population is bombarded by an endless stream of propaganda and wokeism is high
I suppose we’ve never been more vulnerable, considering the impact of social media. They have more power than governments.
Is that why China continues building coal power plants while Australia builds none?
I may be wrong, but the Paris Climate Accord allows China to increase its CO2 emissions until 2030 (because China is a developing country {????})
Yes Bob you are correct, China is definitely “developing” new and bigger carbon dioxide production systems. They are doing all the heavy lifting on that one, but help is coming to them, in the form of Belt and Road projects. Those give a double benefit to China, they manage to increase CO2 and provide financial investment returns from grateful other “developing” nations.
yuh, just look at their cities- they look soooo poverty stricken
Of course somebody has to have industry- since America and Europe decided to move much of theirs out of country. Here in Massachusetts- the state governmnet brags about the low carbon emissions the state has- now that most of its industries have left.
Not really – that came out of the Obama-China agreement where Obama pledged to reduce American emissions and China pledged to increase theirs to a 2030 peak and only then start reducing. China pledged a separate set of conditions under the Paris agreement which, so far, they have exceeded (with no obvious outcry or penalty) and look to be on course to completely ignore by the 2nd pledge milestone as well.
Actually I believe they committed only to “peak,” not reduce, their emissions by 2030. Think plateau, not rollercoaster.
China Puts Economy First Climate Last.
Good, I wonder how long before we in the west wake up and do the same.
I’m afraid we are too woke, to wake up.
I think by the time we do wake up (if we ever do) we will be developing countries or at least redeveloping, wonder if we’ll get a free pass like China does now. No doubt if it happens Greta’s grandkids will be shouting HOW DARE YOU!
China wants to dominate the world economy. They try to push CO2 emissions limits and warming fears on other countries to weaken foreign economies, while they build many coal-fired power plants to provide cheap electricity at home. China gets dirtier and richer, everyone else needs to be cleaner and poorer.
The problem is that lots of westerners want to virtue-signal about global warming, and cripple our own economies and hope that China will “follow our lead”, while not realizing that the Chinese are lying through their teeth and laughing all the way to the bank.
China did something similar with the Wuhan Flu–they didn’t allow infected people from Wuhan to travel elsewhere in China, but were happy to fly them to the USA and Europe to spread the pandemic there. Happy (sick) Chinese New Year 2020 from Wuhan!
It appears that the third-to-last paragraph in the above article, while absolutely true, needs to be updated. My recommended changes, with replacement text in bold:
“What it tells us is that the environmental
lobby in ChinaParis Accord of 2015 is toothless,the proverbial paper tigerwith the usefulness of toilet paper.”Yes, China did sign the Paris Accord on April 22, 2016 (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Paris_Agreement )
I don’t think you should put the Paris Accord of 2015 on par with toilet paper. Toilet paper is actually important and useful.
AGWiNS, very good point and duly noted!
I mean … of course … right? We’ve only been saying this for the last 20+ years. China cheαts egregiously when it can’t get away with honestly reporting its remarkable violation of the spirit of the IPCC Kyoto, Paris and Lagos objectives. China simply doesn’t give a hot dâhmn. At all. Never has, never will.
China’s stultifyingly self-absorbed neo-wealthy would eat the last rhinoceros, would fish and slaver over the last coeleanth, the last red snapper. If ‘baby giraffe’ was suddenly the best meat ever, then count giraffes out as a species. China would pay to eat the last one.
Because… she doesn’t give a f-*-k. At all.
Never has, never will.
And that is to me, a nominal Repüblıcan-voting, but 1960s Lıberal fellow, maddening.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
China and Russia’s economies are going to take off as opposed to the US, because they are climate realists!
“U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has urged his counterpart Xie Zhenhua to pursue more ambitious climate actions“
Now if only Kerry would show how to cut emissions by setting the example in his personal life. And without buying carbon credits.
“. . . urged his counterpart Xie Zhenhua to pursue more ambitious climate actions.”
Now that is what I call one real tough negotiation. Thank you, John Kerry . . . now go collect your $200,000+ annual salary check.
It always amazes me that US and EU environmentalists refuse to go to China and educate the people there on how to save the earth.
97% of scientists agree that we can’t wait because we are in a climate emergency.
Although ignored by the West until recently, (maybe it will just go away?) they actually know that nothing will stop rising CO2 from engulfing the pathetic “plans” for decarbonizing Western economies. That the EU has used up precious gas reserves following three long cold winters has finally forced their hands and they are now reopening coal-fired power plants to save the economy.
Now this folks is a real tipping point! Going to ugly coal says we may as well just go all the way. It
is the irreversible goodbye to renewables. Germany had already decided this and the rest had to come to their senses. Moreover living in denial regarding the transportation sector was a tipping point in-waiting.
China new it had to be toast in Europe, hence their pragmatic plan to save the economy was already prepared.
Russia knew the EU was facing extinction over this stuff and spent their time building giant reserves of o, g and coal all ready for when Europe woke up.
Whatever the failings of totalitarian communist party rule (and they are legion), Chinese government under Deng and Xi has demonstrated that its first priority is improving the material well-being of its citizens.
In what we laughingly call the western democracies, our leaders have decided that fantasies about “climate”, race and gender are the only things that matter.
Material well-being is sacrificed on the altar of climate change, and this process has barely started yet, although anyone who hangs out at WUWT can see where it’s headed.
Our collective psychological well-being, the sense of who we are, what we are, why we are here and what our place in the world is, is being actively eroded by attacks on two fronts from race and gender activism. Again, the process has hardly got under way, but you can see where it’s going, and the future doesn’t exactly look rosy.
China just needs to keep doing what it’s doing. As Napoleon said: “never interrupt your enemy when he’s busy making a mistake”
Are you thinking of the other China? The CCP puts power first and the citizens last.
Now, now, the CCP will hear no talk of there being more than one China. Such talk will get you sent to the same camps they send the Uighur to.
True, but it’s all based on a social contract between the state and citizens. The populations wants living security, jobs, rising incomes, housing, health, etc, and the party wants the power
People should have a look – this is what the US used to do :
Xinhua – China, World, Business, Sports, Photos and Video | English.news.cn (xinhuanet.com)
Those who took the US from a booming adventurous science driven economy to a disaster want to do the same to China.
“When the chips are down, China will always put the economy first.”
It is not only China,it is also true of 165 Developing Countries defined as “Annex11 countries”.
28 Developed Countries remain as Annex1 countries to carry the burden and bear the cost of “Saving the Planet”.
One of these 28,Turkey, has been wisely agitating for several years to be removed to the Annex 11 countries!
For a few brief years,the USA was out but is now back in the quicksand.
If people read some history surrounding the UNFCCC and the formation of the UN IPCC, they would understand where the Key UN Principle of “Common but Differentiated Obligations” comes from.
Particularly recommended is Cambridge historian Rupert Darwall’s “The Age of Global Warming:A History”.
As long ago as 1985 at the Villach Conference in Austria,agreement was reached with recalcitrant developing countries that when there was a conflict between economic development and environmental obligations the former would prevail.
And so it remains today as XI Jinping reminded the world at the recent Virtual Climate Conference in April.
” Mr. Xi has said that China will reach a peak in its carbon emissions before 2030, but he hasn’t elaborated on how the country will achieve that goal.”
Easy. Finish building all the new coal plants by then. Oh, and tell lots of lies.
Indeed. They’ve got a free pass until 2030 and they plan on making the most of it while their competitors hamstring themselves with unrealistic goals of replacing reliable energy with unreliable.
I think we all knew this was coming. I just thought it would be closer to their 2030 commitment. When their “climate leadership” goal was to stop increasing emissions by 2030, it was obvious to everyone that that was no commitment at all. Like all these political commitment that are dated for after the politician making them retires, it is all just window dressing.
What they commit to today, will be “renegotiated” tomorrow.