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BEIJING: A senior Chinese official on Wednesday (October 28) accused the United States of deflecting blame and breaking its word when it comes to combating climate change, as the diplomatic dispute between the world’s two largest economies shifts to the environment.
The US State Department said last month that China had shown a “deliberate disregard” for the quality of air, land and water, and was putting global health at risk, with its greenhouse gases that heat the world. climate, the highest in the world and continue to rise.
But Washington cannot hold other countries to take responsibility for their own environmental failures, Li Gao, head of the climate change department at China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said during a press conference.
“The United States is the country with the most accumulated greenhouse gases and at the beginning of next month it will formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” he said.
READ: Comment: Is China’s ambitious carbon promise just lip service?
The dispute is part of a broader dispute between the two sides, with Beijing repeatedly accusing Washington of “unilateralism”, intimidating and failing to fulfill its global obligations while emphasizing its own multilateralist credentials.
The United States began the three-year process to withdraw from the Paris accord in 2017, and President Donald Trump said the accord favored Chinese companies and undermined the American economy.
But China’s Foreign Ministry said last week that the United States was a “consensus breaker” and a “troublemaker” and had failed to honor its commitments to the international community.
CLEAR ADVANTAGES
After Trump accused Beijing of “rampant pollution” during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in late September, his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, vowed to lead his country towards “carbon neutrality” by 2060 and play a bigger role in fighting climate change.
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Experts have said that the country’s carbon neutral commitment is part of an effort to build its reputation as a responsible global leader.
“Xi Jinping’s announcement … is a high-level political decision. It is a very important geopolitical consideration,” said Li Shuo, a climate adviser for the environmental group Greenpeace.
China’s diplomatic position has been damaged by claims that its authoritarian political system led to a cover-up of the COVID-19 outbreak, allowing it to spread around the world.
But Xie Zhenhua, special adviser to China’s Ministry of Environment, said the system has “clear advantages” over its rivals in the area of climate change.
“Some countries find it difficult to implement,” said Xie, who led China’s climate negotiating team until 2018. “Why? Because they are electoral governments and they can plan for only four or five years and after that, no. I know if they will. Still be in power. “
“The United States, for example: Obama has committed to many goals that will not be met once Trump comes to power.”
However, critics of China’s “authoritarian environmentalism” say it could still struggle to meet long-term climate goals.
“In the absence of the rule of law, authoritarian rulers have the last word, but their political agenda continues to change, making it difficult to maintain a coherent agenda on climate change,” said Yanzhong Huang, author of Toxic Politics, which analyzes Environmental Record. from China.
FILE PHOTO: Smoke and steam rise from a steel plant in Anyang, Henan Province, China, February 18, 2019 (Photo: Reuters / Thomas Peter).
DELAY IN THE CARBON TRADING PLATFORM
China is aiming to launch a nationwide emissions trading scheme during the period from 2021 to 2025, Li said, indicating another delay for the long-awaited carbon trading platform.
Technical problems and concerns about the accuracy and transparency of emissions data have plagued the scheme, whose first phase, covering the power sector, was expected to launch this year.
“China’s carbon market will evolve from regional pilot programs to a national trading scheme and expand from a single sector to multiple industries,” Li said in a briefing.
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This included online trading and the stable operation of the national emissions trading scheme (ETS), he added.
“The fourteenth five-year plan (2021-2025) is a great developmental period for the establishment of carbon trading,” Gao said.
The national trading system was originally promised by President Xi Jinping before the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
In 2017, China announced the launch of the national ETS, designed to include all major industrial sectors, but there has been no trade yet and relevant regulations have not been issued.
In August, China’s pilot ETS in seven regions covered nearly 3,000 industrial emitters and traded 406 million tons of greenhouse gas equivalent to carbon dioxide, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) said.
Once the energy sector begins to be commercialized, China’s national scheme is expected to eclipse that of the European Union to become the world’s largest carbon trading scheme.
Li added that the ministry was still reviewing the draft allowances plan, which had been modified to reflect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, following comments from the local government and power generators.
