Sunday 6 November 2022

China is the biggest carbon emissions polluter

No matter what the world decides at the climate-change summit in Egypt, nothing will be seriously achieved unless China, the biggest polluter in the world, agrees to make huge policy decisions: either cut back on carbon emissions on a scale and timetable that would be immensely impressive or donate vast sums to developing countries which have played little part in destroying the planet but have suffered the worst from flooding, tsunamies and other devastating global-warming challenges. The chances are that China will do something but not nearly enough. The US used to be the biggest pulluter and was number one in the rankings for carbon emissions. China now is so far ahead of the US that it is guilty of producing double the amount compared with America. Beijing claims it is still a developing nation, so it's unfair to make them the scapegoat. But that argument holds no water any longer. China's economy is striding ahead and the country is a vast production line for what the rest of the world needs. So in Egypt Beijing has to make the biggest gesture of its life and lead the way towards saving this planet. It won't I'm sure because the President-for-life Xi Zinping doesn't want to stop polluting the atmosphere until China rivals or overtakes the US as an economic and military superpower. Rishi Sunak who is attending the summit after all - surprise surprise - is going to call on world leaders to do more to switch to alternative energy sources. Well, duh, we've got well beyond that. People have been pressurising for that for DECADES and no one really listened, well not enough to invest big sums on alternative energy. What we need now from the summit in Egypt is a firm, binding commitment to drastically reduce carbon emissions in a much shorter timeframe, with China and the US providing joint leadership to save the planet from a catastrophe. Will this happen? I suspect not which means the next generations of humans are doomed to a fearful future. That's not being alarmist, it's a fact!

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