The United States is the real bogeyman of climate change
- China should help fund the Global South to transition to a low-carbon economy, but must avoid Washington’s cynical politicisation of proposed developed countries’ compensation for poor and climate-vulnerable nations
Most mainstream economists and international institutions classify China as a developing country. Even the United States usually does, except when it wants to play politics such as at the COP27 summit in Egypt. When it comes to climate change compensation for poorer nations, Washington suddenly wants to put China in the “developed nation” category.
The cynicism and hypocrisy are breathtaking. For geopolitical one-upmanship over China, the US is willing to put the entire planet at risk. So much for its supposed global leadership.
India and China are pushing for such a compensation fund along with dozens of developing countries. For the first time, financing for “loss and damage” is on the agenda. After decades of denial, high emitters of early industrialisation in the West concede that they should compensate low- and middle-income countries for the effects of climate change.
The US, however, is stalling. By the way, one of its two dominant political parties denies the reality of climate change. Whatever this Democrat administration commits to, the next Republican one that comes along is likely to repudiate it. Any US climate commitment has little credibility.
There have been plenty of such precedents in the last two decades. In 2001, president George W. Bush announced that his country would not implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, because that would hold back US economic growth and that there was not enough pressure put on developing countries to limit their emissions.
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In 2017, president Donald Trump cited similar reasons for ending all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement. You can bet the next Republican president will do the same, whatever Joe Biden commits to in Egypt. But given his bad faith in tying China to the proposed developed nations’ compensation fund, he is no climate saint either.
But, here’s Washington’s bait-and-switch argument: China is the world’s second-biggest economy and is the worst emitter.
The reality is that China’s per capita carbon emission is less than half that of the US. As for its being No 1 in terms of overall emissions, that’s because in the past three decades, it has been “the world’s factory”. Much of its exports ended up in the US. It also enabled the US’ production outsourcing and deindustrialisation in favour of its highly destructive financial capitalism leading to the last global financial crisis.
According to Columbia University’s centre on global energy policy: “[China] ranks a mere 86th on the Human Development Index established by the United Nations Development Programme, and its income per capita qualifies it as a middle-income country eligible for World Bank loans. The country is also big and diverse: while Beijing and Shanghai are modern and largely affluent, many regions in China still face the burdens of underdevelopment.”
The World Bank describes the country thus: “China is now an upper-middle-income country. It will be important going forward that poverty alleviation efforts increasingly shift to addressing the vulnerabilities faced by the large number of people still considered poor by the standards of middle-income countries, including those living in urban areas.”
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But the most obvious argument for the “loss and damage” fund is that it was the early industrialised countries in the West which generated most of today’s greenhouse gases.
While Beijing must expose Biden’s cynical politicisation of climate policy and refuse to link itself to negotiations over forming a developed countries’ compensation fund, it should work with the much-less hostile European Union to do its part for developing countries.
It has already reiterated its commitment to carbon neutrality. It will continue, but should also strengthen, climate change mitigation measures already included under the Belt and Road Initiative for dozens of developing countries. These should include a combination of debt forgiveness or restructuring, along with construction and trade measures in support of a low-carbon transition that’s tailored to each country’s specific situation. China must pay, but only on fair and equitable terms.
