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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; Senior CCP officials have indicated China’s 2030 CO2 pledges are goals to strive towards, rather than targets they would ensure were achieved. They also emphasised that more developed nations should shoulder most of the burden of reducing global emissions.
Caution on carbon as ‘China realises key role of coal’ in energy mix
Targets come with no guarantees and should not affect development, former officials sayAwareness has grown of just how difficult it will be for the country to make the shift away from the fossil fuel, analysts say
Echo Xie
Published: 9:15am, 13 Dec, 2021Serving and former Chinese senior officials have urged caution on the path towards carbon neutrality, echoing the leadership’s assessment that climate targets “can’t be achieved in just one battle”.
Addressing a forum in Beijing on Saturday, former finance minister Lou Jiwei said that while China had said it would “strive to” reach peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060, there was a difference between this and “ensuring [those targets would be achieved]”.
“We are a developing country. We should bear common but differentiated responsibilities that are different from developed countries,” Lou told the gathering organised by the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges.
Han Wenxiu, from the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs, was similarly cautious, saying the two targets were complex and long-term tasks that required full consideration of the country’s energy and industrial structure.
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According to the statement, fossil fuels should be phased out “based on” safe and reliable alternative sources of energy. China should also make clean and efficient use of coal, given the fuel’s dominant role in the country’s power generation and consumption, it said.
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“It’s the first time that [Chinese officials] have announced a transition from controlling energy consumption and intensity to carbon consumption and intensity, so it is meaningful,” Ma said.
“The challenge is we don’t have a cap on carbon emissions yet. It is time to set the cap, which will send a clear signal to local governments, companies and the society to better guide their transformation and investment.”
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Read more: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3159418/caution-carbon-china-realises-key-role-coal-energy-mix
A month ago John Kerry announced a US to China technology transfer agreement, in which Kerry agreed to gift US technology and access to US academia to China for free, to help China reduce CO2 emissions.
China now appears to be suggesting they are happy to accept the technology, but perhaps awareness is growing in China, even amongst supporters of renewable energy, of the magnitude of the task of decarbonising the Chinese economy.
And there are renewable energy supporters in the CCP. Earlier this year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping triggered energy chaos by imposing impossible coal quotas on China, in the months leading up to COP26.
At the time I thought China was just playing games, trying to look good for the big climate conference. But what if Xi genuinely believed his decarbonisation / renewable energy quotas were achievable?
China’s greatest cultural weakness is nobody can tell the boss he made a mistake. A Chinese company once flew me halfway around the world, to find a way to communicate a problem to the boss without anyone losing face. Even in China, the message eventually gets through, when the problems become impossible to ignore.
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Developing country? With per capita energy use in the middle of the European range? What happens when the vast majority catch up to their masters?
Taken another way: when the vast majority catch up to their masters – that’s when the nooses come out.
https://unherd.com/2021/12/does-the-ccp-control-extinction-rebellion/
Read this.
Ah, the Chinese. So inscrutable. A recent discussion though among Chinese officials whose names have been redacted so we’ll call them A, B, and C went as follows:
A: “I can not believe how dumb and naieve Westerners are”.
B: “I know, right? They take everything we say at face value. It’s like taking candy from a baby”.
C: Yes, and the beauty of it is that they actually have to believe us. It’s their own propaganda, not ours”. Much laughter then ensues.
“A month ago John Kerry announced a US to China technology transfer agreement, in which Kerry agreed to gift US technology and access to US academia to China for free, to help China reduce CO2 emissions.”
Outside of nuclear the US doesn’t have any significant CO2-reducing technology to gift China. At least nothing they haven’t already stolen. And that will probably be out of date soon.What does Kerry think 50% of those hard-working Chinese Post-Docs do with their learning and experience in the US if/when they go back to China?
I’ll bet money that the Chinese have the first working commercial Thorium reactor (unless India gets there first). Maybe, like Sputnik, it will be a “Wakey!, wakey!” call for the US.
Oh come on. Everyone knew the Chinese had no intention of complying with any reductions. They went along with the show just to encourage the west’s economic suicide. They’re not going to destroy their economy along with ours.
“Even in China, the message eventually gets through, when the problems become impossible to ignore.”
Shame one can’t say that about the US or the UK (or the EU, ………… )!
What did the US give up for this fickle pledge from a fickle nation, and for a non-existent problem and “solution”?
Quick translation – “You first, sucker.” The Chicoms are laughing at the gullibility of the west and cheering on their sprint to the economic cliff edge, nothing more. Any “commitments” they make about “decarbonizing,” “peaking emissions,” or anything else related to undermining their ability to use all the fossil fuels they want to are just empty promises they use to continue to prod the “west” towards economic suicide. Every such “commitment” will be a “can kicked down the road” as the “due dates” approach, guaranteed.
6000 years of cultural consistency should have been plenty of time to develop any country. Especially when you consider a country that has modern skyscraper buildings, nuclear weapons, a space program and can feed 1.5 billion people everyday.
Both of the men pictured as lead-in to the above article exhibit a facial expression consistent with coming out of a bathroom visit having successfully done a #2.
Why is that? Or is this just a case of my lying eyes? 🙂
“They also emphasised that more developed nations should shoulder most of the burden of reducing global emissions.”
I guess they mean nations developed enough to have space programs and hypersonic missiles n stuff.
China is still a developing country? Sends people into space, is building a space station, sends probes to Mars & the moon, is building the worlds biggest navy, army and air force, has developed hyper-sonic missiles and the nuclear warheads to go with them, dominates the worlds heavy industrial production, etc. etc. etc…
Australia can not, or no longer, do any of this stuff, yet as a so-called developed country we are to be responsible for saving the world from global warming while China pretends to be some backward and insignificant player in the global economy? O’Kay, whatever.