3 July 2014

China’s Hurdle to Fast Action on Climate Change

JULY 1, 2014

A coal heating plant in Beijing. China is the world’s top greenhouse gas polluter. Credit Image by How Hwee Young/European Pressphoto Agency.

When the Environmental Protection Agency published in June its new rules to combat carbon emissions from power plants, the American political class lit up in debates over what this meant for the country’s carbon emissions, its coal industry and its economic growth.

But a more relevant discussion was taking place some 7,000 miles away. In Beijing, He Jiankun, an academic and deputy director of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference that China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, would for the first time put “an absolute cap” on its emissions.

His comments, and the brief flurry set off over whether they represented government policy, highlight a little-appreciated feature of the long-running, often acrimonious debate over how to slow climate change. The most pressing issue is not whether the United States will manage to wean itself from coal, or even about how quickly the American economy can reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

The most pressing issue is to what extent and under which conditions China will participate in the global effort to combat climate change. Any hopes that American commitments to cut carbon emissions will have a decisive impact on climate change rely on the assumption that China will reciprocate and deliver aggressive emission cuts of its own.

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