Raphael ThysPhoto by Nikolay Kovalenko on Unsplash
China May Have Just Condemned The Entire World
A crucial shift in rhetoric from the superpower is deeply worrying.
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Published in
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7 min read
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3 days ago
We are rapidly approaching the Dubai COP28 summit, and there is anticipation that something massive could happen. A growing movement is calling for a fossil fuel phase-out plan to be signed at COP28 to ensure we will actually meet our goal of limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Hopes have been high that such a revolutionary and planetary-scale deal is on the table. But China recently dashed this hope and showed that they aren’t willing to give up the dino juice just yet, and in doing so, may have condemned the world to a climate catastrophe. Let me explain.
During a recent speech in Beijing, China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, had some worrying things to say about the future of China’s energy industry. He said that “completely eliminating fossil energy is not realistic,” sitting its reliance on the weather and stating that “fossil fuels should serve as a flexible and back — up energy source when technologies such as large-scale energy storage, electric power transmission, smart grids, microgrids are not yet fully mature.” He went on to say that emissions from these fossil fuel power stations can be offset by carbon capture and storage systems. This resonates with COP28 president and head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Sultan Al-Jaber, who says the world needs to reduce fossil fuel emissions rather than fossil fuels themselves.
Let’s not forget the backdrop here. 2022 and 2023 were the first years the global community saw the devastating impact of climate change, and it has deeply spooked them. As such, major players such as the UN, IEA, the EU, and 17 countries are now calling for an international phase-out of fossil fuels to be agreed as soon as possible.
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The place where such an agreement can be made and enacted is COP28. While it is worrying that the summit is headed by someone with a profound conflict of interest (since his wealth comes from oil), they don’t have the political power in this environment, so they aren’t a huge concern. However, China is the world’s biggest polluter, and as such, they hold a massive…