Has China just saved the world? And how much of a radical green overhaul do we need to avoid climate lockdown?
From The Economist
A story at the very opposite end from our usual micro and localised concerns… but worth drawing to your attention.
For one reason, because the story was largely ignored in our current UK media storm; for another, that it puts our striving for immediate community responses to climate crisis in a wider geopolitical context. If there is fair wind for zero-carbon measures, we should know where it is coming from.
The economic historian Adam Tooze told us this week in Foreign Review that is it, undeniably, coming from China:
“China will scale up its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by adopting more vigorous policies and measures. We aim to have [carbon dioxide] emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.”
Xi Jinping’s speech via video link to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22 was not widely trailed in advance. But with those two short sentences China’s leader may have redefined the future prospects for humanity.
That may sound like hyperbole, but in the world of climate politics it is hard to exaggerate China’s centrality. Thanks to the gigantic surge in economic growth since 2000 and its reliance on coal-fired electricity generation, China is now by far the largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
At about 28 percent of the global total, the carbon dioxide produced in China (as opposed to that consumed in the form of Chinese exports) is about as much as that produced by the United States, European Union, and India combined. Per capita, its emissions are now greater than those of the EU if we count carbon dioxide emissions on a production rather than a consumption basis.
Global warming is produced not by the annual flows of carbon but by the stocks that have accumulated over time in the Earth’s atmosphere. Allowing an equal ration for every person on the planet, it remains the case that the historic responsibility for excessive carbon accumulation lies overwhelmingly with the United States and Europe.
Still today China’s emissions per capita are less than half those of the United States. But as far as future emissions are concerned, everything hinges on China.
As concerned as Europeans and Americans may be with climate policy, they are essentially bystanders in a future determined by the decisions made by the large, rapidly growing Asian economies, with China far in the lead. China’s rapid rebound from the COVID-19 shock only reinforces that point. With his terse remarks, Xi has mapped out a large part of the future path ahead.
As the impact of his remarks sank in, climate modellers crunched the numbers and concluded that, if fully implemented, China’s new commitment will by itself lower the projected temperature increase by 0.2-0.3 degrees Celsius. It is the largest favourable shock that their models have ever produced.
Tooze asks: is China for real here? Read the rest of the piece to assess his answer. But essentially, he reads China as decoupling from any action an American administration of whatever kind might take, and acting unilaterally (in accord with the Paris agreement which urges national action on climate targets). This puts China in alignment with EU targets, and maybe opens up mutual markets between the continents on green tech.
Where that places a buccaneering Brexit state, in this context, is anyone’s guess. But as Tooze concludes, “As Xi made clear on Sept. 22, as far as the most important collective issue facing humanity is concerned, the major players are no longer waiting”.
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Another macro-take that stretches its tendrils into communities and localities is this Project Syndicate piece from the economist Mariana Mazzucato. It’s on the dramatic measures that national and global establishments need to consider, to cope with the trifecta of health and economic impacts of COVID, and implacable global warming.
She has a list of deeper options for governments:
Use the tax code to discourage firms from using certain materials
Introduce job guarantees at company or national level so that human capital is not wasted or eroded. This would help the youngest and oldest workers, who have disproportionately suffered job losses owing to the pandemic, and reduce the likely economic shocks in disadvantaged regions already suffering industrial decline.
Harness finance in productive ways to drive long-term growth. Patient long-term finance is key, because a 3-5-year investment cycle doesn’t match the long lifespan of a wind turbine (more than 25 years), or encourage the innovation needed in e-mobility, natural capital development (such as rewilding programs), and green infrastructure.
Launch sustainable growth initiatives. New Zealand has developed a budget based on “wellbeing” metrics, rather than GDP, to align public spending with broader objectives, while Scotland has established the mission-orientedScottish National Investment Bank.
Markets will not lead a green revolution on their own, government policy must steer them in that direction. This will require an entrepreneurial state that innovates, takes risks, and invests alongside the private sector. Policymakers should therefore redesign procurement contracts in order to move away from low-cost investments by incumbent suppliers, and create mechanisms that “crowd in” innovation from multiple actors to achieve public green goals.
Reorient our energy system around renewable energy – the antidote to climate change and the key to making our economies energy-secure.
Evict fossil-fuel interests and short-termism from business, finance, and politics. Financially powerful institutions such as banks and universities must divest from fossil-fuel companies. Until they do, a carbon-based economy will prevail.
Yet what’s most interesting in Mazzucato’s piece is her hope that the “future of work, transit and energy use” can be shaped by “the concept of a ‘green good life’”, as outlined by the economist Carlota Perez.
Difficult on these islands, under the current Westminster incumbents, to see much avidity for promoting such a sensibility or consensus coming from the top. But the idea of a green good life certainly animates many of the initiatives and enterprises that come to the attention of this blog, or that ask to work with us.
Maybe at some point this avidity for a deep lifestyle shift in a green direction will be caught by an appropriately crafted party-political message (the Free Greens in Denmark are setting the pace to other Green parties on this). Meanwhile, we’ll work at the roots and where it’s fertile.