He just states the oblivious as a climate denier and his opinion Russia did sign the Paris agreement last year. Is the change going to happen overnight. No , Russia is not known for its sunny days. Nor is wind turbines going to work that well in a cold climate until improvements are made where they can. So they are not going to capitulate completely on fossil fuel Yet they are willing to discuss ideas. Yet they do not need to discus ideas if they did not want to. It took a number of years to get Russia to the table but at lease they are at the table.
China as one of the worlds leaders in emissions and have to be brought into the discussion. They live with the smog and realize that this cannot go on. Yet with trade wars and economic slowdown, they are not going to cut it off overnight. Lenovo and Huawei have improved their supply chains and making them 'green" and they are in the top 30 of world that use green supply chains.
So obvious if you frame the argument from the negative view point then point to those things that support your argument then you are just telling half the story. Ignoring improvement and expecting these countries to be on the same level as the US is not going to happen yet but they are working on it.
But China hasn't reduced their emissions at all,
they are now about emitting TWICE what America emits.
They have no intention either that is one of the points made in the article through
internal link:
"After years of putting the brakes on the amount of coal plants newly proposed and permitted for construction, China is again stepping on the gas. . . . China currently has 249.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity under development (97.8 GW under construction and 151.8 GW in planning), a 21% increase over end-2019 (205.9 GW). The amount of capacity under development (249.6 GW) is larger than the [entire] coal fleets of the United States (246.2 GW) or India (229.0 GW)."
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China now has 4 times the coal power production than America and still going up
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Here is a section of the article certain people didn't bother to read:
"Xi, meanwhile, is rubbing his hands with glee at the stupidity of the U.S. leaders. He pockets each successive U.S. promise to destroy its own economy, and then responds with empty words and no specific commitments at all from his own side. Xi actually showed up at Biden’s summit today. Here is what he had to say,
as quoted in the New York Times:
President Xi Jinping of China said his country would “strictly limit increasing coal consumption” in the next five years and phase it down in the following five years. . . . Mr. Xi repeated his pledge from last year to draw down carbon emissions to net zero by 2060. And, in a pointed reminder to his host, President Biden, he said that the industrialized countries of the West had a historic responsibility to act faster to reduce emissions.
I love that part about “strictly limit[ing]” coal consumption. With 250 GW of new coal power plants in development, what does that even mean? I guess that building more new coal plants than the U.S. even has is now a “strict limit.” China’s emissions, already far the largest in the world, will continue to increase rapidly, without any sort of quantitative promise to do otherwise."
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It is clear Biden and Kerry did poorly here.
This is a commitment based on time lines
China’s existing climate commitments which are to reach peak emissions by 2030 and hit net zero by 2050.
View attachment 483671
This is a picture of solar power site in china. So it is not that they are doing nothing. Its about the time frame and can they met it. Still something is better than nothing.
it is estimated that 70 percent of solar panels are made in China.
using the fair share index , yes they are behind. Using the agreed upon index of 2 percent, they are behind but this does not mean that they are doing nothing. So ultimately Biden is not wasting his time. By keeping their reminder on the table and they are still committed to the goal. They may reach their goal or they may not. Still it is just a goal and again it is not that they are doing nothing.
The country is still on pace yet they are doing better than Russia. They are even doing better than the US.
Climate trackers place both the US and Russia at the bottom.
Canada is doing better than all three.
Still the agreement is about reaching target goals in the future.