Chinese President Xi Jinping said that by 2035 his country would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 7% to 10% from their peak, a day after President Donald Trump called climate change a “con job.”
I’m not defending China, but this is all the countries in the world. There is no legal mechanism for everyone to achieve climate targets. Even if Trump never pulled out from Paris Climate deal, the deal itself is nonbinding. Nicaragua was right not to have initially signed it for that every same reason, because the deal will not punish anyone for not meeting climate targets. It is also unfortunate, but not maybe surprising, that the international climate funding became a money laundering, green washing scam because there is no oversight. Like, one construction of a hotel received financing from the fund because it has “green initiative”.
The funding became source of vanity projects and corruption.
And just a few years ago China was basically waving off climate change by giving it lip service and then producing well over the emissions they were claiming, basically thumbing their nose at the entire global community. Now they want to play ball. Even if they didn’t come with a 30% reduction, this is a major step forward.
I’m not defending China, but this is all the countries in the world. There is no legal mechanism for everyone to achieve climate targets. Even if Trump never pulled out from Paris Climate deal, the deal itself is nonbinding. Nicaragua was right not to have initially signed it for that every same reason, because the deal will not punish anyone for not meeting climate targets. It is also unfortunate, but not maybe surprising, that the international climate funding became a money laundering, green washing scam because there is no oversight. Like, one construction of a hotel received financing from the fund because it has “green initiative”. The funding became source of vanity projects and corruption.
And just a few years ago China was basically waving off climate change by giving it lip service and then producing well over the emissions they were claiming, basically thumbing their nose at the entire global community. Now they want to play ball. Even if they didn’t come with a 30% reduction, this is a major step forward.
I fully agree that practically no country is on track, but the title literally says, “China leads nations with climate plans”. This is outright false.