There was one place where China’s assumption of the title of the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases came as no surprise: Beijing has anticipated and planned for this moment. Until earlier this year climate change was hardly mentioned in the Chinese media. Now the government is encouraging newspapers, radio and television to report on the subject, beginning the long process of educating the population — which increasingly defines itself by what it owns — to understand the long-term consequences of a level of consumption they have only recently been able to enjoy. At government level, a series of briefings by climate-change experts for the leadership, and a policy effort that involved 17 ministries, produced China’s first national climate-change plan this month. It falls well short of what will eventually be required, but it is a beginning.
There are two reasons for this flurry of media attention and political activity: Beijing has understood how severe the impacts of climate change could be for China. And, diplomatically, China’s pole position as leading emitter will have a negative impact on its unthreatening international image of a “peacefully rising” power, an image it has devoted considerable effort to promote.
China has been able to avoid taking a forward diplomatic position on climate change as long as George Bush’s US, by far the biggest per capita emitter and, until now, the biggest overall, was acting as the spoiler for global mitigation efforts. Why should a developing country, even one aiming to be the next global power, volunteer for the frontline of the fight when the world’s richest and most technologically advanced country would not even join the army?
China’s hitherto benign image in the global south is now at risk as the impacts of climate change become more severe: a policy had to be agreed and China had to be seen to act.
More starkly, given the potential impact of climate change on China’s development, mitigation is as much in its interest as it is in the interests of all. The circle that remains to be squared is how the burden of mitigation is to be shared between the developed and the developing world.
Unlike the old industrialised countries, China does not have a hundred years in which to clean up, nor is there a developing world to which it can export its polluting industries, as the world did to China. Finally, the developed world put so much carbon into the atmosphere through its own industrialisation that there is now no margin for China to repeat the pattern of rapid dirty growth followed by leisurely clean-up. It is an unenviable position for China, and one for which the rest of the world must take a large share of responsibility.
For those who live in the developed world, there are two possible responses to China’s passing this milestone: to blame it for the reckless pursuit of its own short-term interests, regardless of the cost to the planet; or to acknowledge that, historically, the West created most of the problem, that most of the goods made in China are consumed in the industrialised world, that the aspirations of people in China to live more prosperous lives are legitimate, and that it is incumbent on the West, morally and practically, to put our money where our mouth is. This means the developed countries drastically reducing emissions and helping China with the finance and technology required to move to a sustainable, low-carbon economic system.
Guardian