Four years ago, when I last wrote in this blog about climate change, the threats seemed ominous but solvable.  As you know, since then it’s only gotten worse.

As one expert summed it up “every one of the ten hottest years in recorded history occurred during the past decade… In the United States, billion-dollar catastrophes—including wildfires, severe storms, and flooding—struck on average every two to three months during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Now they occur on average every two to three weeks.”

The gold standard for measuring progress in fighting climate change was established in 2015 when 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement.  It aimed to limit the increase in average global temperature to a maximum of two degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.  But it now looks like the actual increase will fall between 2.1 and 3.4 degrees Celsius before 2100.  And that assumes that governments actually do what they agreed to in Paris.  So far, very few have.

No one knows what the long-term effects may be, since as noted in a recent Foreign Affairs article “the world has not experienced a temperature rise of 2.5 degrees Celsius for more than three million years.”  But many experts still believe that, as an article in the Washington Post recently put it there is “a glimmer of hope that averting the worst of climate change might still be possible.”  Technical solutions do exist; we just need governments to take the necessary steps.

In the US, progress depends on who wins the next election.  Under President Biden, “Congress finally delivered transformative legislation to tackle the climate crisis… after decades of effort ending in failure, near-misses or small wins…  The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act invests hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy, electric vehicles, environmental justice and more.”

Meanwhile, “Donald Trump [has] repeatedly called climate change a ‘hoax’ [and] he spent every single year in office gutting and undermining environmental protections and regulations.”  At a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser in May, Trump “pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, as well as other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry.”  There was just one little catch:  oil executives need to raise $1 billion for his presidential campaign.  A few weeks later, Trump held a $250,000 per person fundraising dinner in Houston where he offered to “lift the natural gas export ban, cancel all unnecessary energy-killing regulations … open up more federal lands” and also “immediately reverse Biden’s pause on approvals of new liquefied natural gas exports.” 

In China, there is no such debate on climate change policy.  In 2020, “Xi Jinping pledged to ‘peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030’ and ‘achieve carbon neutrality before 2060’.”  And what Xi wants, he usually gets. 

According to a New York Times piece entitled “Xi Thinks China Can Slow Climate Change. What If He’s Right?” China hopes to “dominate the global transition to green energy, with his one-party state acting as the driving force in a way that free markets cannot or will not. His ultimate goal is not just to address one of humanity’s most urgent problems — climate change — but also to position China as the global savior in the process.”

The good news is that in many ways, China has started to succeed by becoming “the world’s leading manufacturer of climate-friendly technologies, such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.”  Specifically, “more than half of all new solar power installed in the world last year was installed inside China. For wind power, the share was even larger: China was responsible for 60 percent of all new global capacity.”  China now “produces 84 percent of the world’s solar modules… produces 89 percent of the world’s solar cells, 97 percent of its solar wafers and ingots… 87 percent of its battery cathodes, 96 percent of its battery anodes, and 91 percent of its battery electrodes.” 

Similarly, when it comes to electric vehicles, in the last five years, China’s electric vehicle exports have grown 8,500 percent.  The country has become “the world’s top exporter of all cars. [In addition] nearly 60 percent of all the world’s electric vehicles are now sold in China.”

How did they do it?  Dictatorship.  Profits matter less than policy in China and their “electric vehicle industry [was] built on subsidies.  For example, Chinese company Nio – one of the largest electric vehicle manufacturers in the world – loses something like $35,000 for every car it sells… [But the company has] formidable government backing that allows them to withstand such losses and keep growing.” 

Admittedly this progress poses risks to the US.  Chinese government subsidies – along with relatively low priced labor — enable manufacturers to offer electric vehicles at very low prices.  The New York Times has reported that “BYD, a Chinese automaker, just rolled out a model priced under $10,000.”  Even if this car was offered at twice that price in the US, according to M.I.T. economist David Autor, “There are few things that would decarbonize the U.S. faster than $20,000 electric vehicles. But there is probably nothing that would kill the U.S. auto industry faster, either.”

Another troubling effect of this progress is that “China controls more than 80 percent of many essential aspects of the global clean-energy supply chain; the United States controls almost none of it.”  This includes “minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and rare earths, which are critical to various clean energy technologies, including wind turbines and electric vehicles.”

These could be serious challenges to US power.  But if the other alternative is to let climate change progress until the entire planet burns, these risks seem a small price to pay.

Still it is important to remember that there are some major problems with Chinese environment policy, chief among them is the fact that “China remains addicted to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel” and is “the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for nearly 30 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.”

At this time, “roughly 65 percent of China’s electricity supply comes from coal, [and in recent years] China [has] dramatically expanded its use of coal-fired power plants.”  Because of this, increasing electric vehicle use within China could have the ironic effect of increasing the country’s total emissions.  Every time a car battery is recharged, it requires burning more coal to generate more electricity.  As a result, “one million plug-in electric cars using China’s power grid could, in many parts of the country, emit roughly as much carbon dioxide as one million gasoline-powered passenger sedans.”

Given this contradiction, “Beijing is approaching a decision point. Xi Jinping’s momentous decision in 2020 to announce the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 now needs to be given teeth. By next year Beijing’s policymakers must chart a national decarbonization path for the next decade…”  This must begin by enforcing existing guidelines for future coal use.  In response to power outages and other problems, in the last few years “coal power project approvals [have] soared, [and] authorities are not following or enforcing the [published] policy to control new projects.”

In theory, other countries could influence China by imposing “carbon taxation—a levy on goods or services corresponding to their carbon footprint, or the emissions required to make them.”  But what are the chances that all the major countries in the world can agree on this, at a time when they don’t seem able to agree on anything?

Put it all together, and “China’s climate policy is the single most important political factor deciding the future of the global environment.”  We can only hope that Xi Jinping will do what he has promised and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.