A firefighter sprays water over festival-goers on the fourth and last day of the 30th edition of the musical festival Les Vieilles Charrues in Carhaix-Plouguer, western France, on July 17, 2022. France and Britain went on high alert on Monday, bracing for record temperatures from a punishing heat wave as deadly wildfires raging in parts of southwest Europe showed no sign of abating. Photo: VCG
The record heat waves, alongside an energy crisis partly caused by the US-instigated Russia-Ukraine crisis, have forced some European countries to row back on their climate goals. Meanwhile, in the US, one of the world’s biggest emitters, climate change has descended to an issue for partisan struggle, and most recently, a topic to demonize China after Beijing suspended communication on this matter with the US after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to the island of Taiwan.
As some parts of the world are still enduring extreme heat waves, Chinese scientists warned that US politicization, flip-flopping on the climate change issue and lack of sincerity fully exposes the US’ hypocrisy on climate issues, and risks pushing the already burning planet to a warmer and more catastrophic future. On the contrary, China is sticking to its goal to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, and the current heat wave and drought in this country will not scupper those goals, said scientists.
In the latest case, the city of Copenhagen has given up on a long-term goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. “As things look now, we cannot achieve our ambitious climate target,” the head of the city municipality’s elected technical and environmental committee, Line Barfoed, said to Danish media on Monday.
The Denmark city’s decision was made after several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands already or are planning to return to coal to generate electricity, after they felt the pinch from energy crisis followed by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and adding insult to injury, Europe’s worst drought in 500 years.
Now that European countries’ return to coal can be seen as a signal that they will be gradually walking away from their goals on carbon neutrality, Bao Cunkuan, a professor from department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering in Fudan University told the Global Times. “It’s safe to say that those European countries made blustery promises on climate,” Bao said.
The dilemma Europe faces now also taught those countries a lesson that different countries have various needs and paces to achieve climate goals. “You can’t chase behind others to let them reach certain targets, said Bao, referring to some European countries’ condescending gesture of pushing China, among other developing countries to phase out coal.
Yet observers admitted Europe has made a substantial contribution on tackling climate change. “The US is the real underachiever in the global warming issue. No matter in history or at the current stage, it simply treats climate and other environmental issues as a tool to maintain its competitiveness. The US government only pays attention to related topics when it is in their favor, when it’s not, the US would rather stamp the welfare of the globe under its feet,” Li Zhiqing, a professor in environmental economics and Chinese Economy at Fudan University, told the Global Times. “That is why Washington’s climate policies always flip-flop.”
In late June, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), limiting the EPA’s authority to regulate gas emissions from the power sector. That means the EPA must now receive clear congressional authorization to phase out coal-fired power generation.
After the decision, the United Nations called the Supreme Court ruling “a setback in our fight against climate change.”
What is worse, the US is now politicizing this issue to hijack global cooperation on climate change. In response to Pelosi’s visit to the island of Taiwan in early August, China suspended cooperation on climate change, among other fields, with the US. US Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry claimed “it punishes the world.”
China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said that it is the US, not China that is punishing the world and developing countries and said the US should shoulder full responsibility for the current situation of China-US climate cooperation.
The US should be aware of such countermeasures before Pelosi made such a provocative visit, which included suspending communication channels on climate change, Yang Fuqiang, a research fellow at Peking University’s Research Institute for Energy, told the Global Times on Thursday. He said that Washington allowed Pelosi to visit anyway, which shows how much the US really cares about climate change.
The fact that the US and China, two biggest global emitters of greenhouse fail to join hands on tackling global warming will certainly shadow global efforts in this front, said a Beijing-based diplomatic analyst, who declined to give his name, saying that now that the US is using the climate issue as a trick to play on geopolitics, which is an alarming sign and is pushing the blazing Earth to a warmer future.
China sticking to original goal
Meanwhile, China is heading toward its goal on carbon neutrality steadily.
Zhang Jianhua, head of the National Energy Administration, said in late July that China’s development of non-fossil energy has continued unabated, noting that the share of non-fossil energy in China’s total energy consumption is expected to grow at an average rate of 1 percentage point a year from now to 2030.
Public and private investment in clean energy in China was $381 billion last year, according to the International Energy Agency. That outstrips all of North America by $146 billion. The share of electricity generation provided by renewables is higher in China than in the US, while the sheer number of solar panels and wind turbines being installed across China leaves their American rivals in the dust, US media Politico reported in August.
Currently, China is also facing the strongest heat wave and most severe drought for six decades, which triggered power shortages in regions that rely heavily on hydropower, such as Southwest China’s Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality. Jin Xiandong, an official of the National Development and Reform Commission, said on August 16 that the commission is guiding relevant enterprises to speed up coal output to cope with rising demand for electricity, and the national average daily dispatched output of coal has been at a relatively high level of about 12.4 million tons since July.
Yang believes that such extreme weather will certainly exert an impact on China’s goal to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030. “According to previous plans and estimates, the peak will come a few years before 2030; now that it may come a couple of years later, but won’t be later than 2030,” said Yang. He also predicted the carbon emission peak value will be higher than previously predicted. “The former calculation is 11 billion tons, now it seems will be 1 billion more.”
(Global Times)
