US-fuelled climate change, not China, is the greatest threat to the global economy and the world

While China is the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, its per capita emissions are less than half the US’ and it is moving towards renewable energy

Meanwhile, the US accounts for twice China’s cumulative emissions in modern times but has pulled out of the Paris Agreement and remains committed to fossil fuels

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A member of the US Park Service’s revegetation crew hikes through fog among the trees blackened by the Sprague Creek wildfire in Glacier National Park, Montana, on September 17. The crew planted 585 whitebark pine seedlings among the skeletal remains of the forest. With annual average temperatures in Montana rising almost 1.6 degrees Celsius since 1950, species like the whitebark pine are now facing increased threats of infections, insect infestations and wildfire. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

Published: 3:00am, 11 Mar 2020Updated: 5:14am, 11 Mar 2020

Is the Chinese Communist Party the central threat of our times, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in Britain recently? Not from outside an American perspective. A YouGov survey in December 2019 reported that Germans saw US President Donald Trump as the greatest threat to world peace, far ahead of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un or Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In a Win/Gallup international poll in 2013, the US was voted as by far the greatest threat to world peace. In Pew surveys, more people around the world said they see the US as a major threat than those who cited China.

China is not even the greatest threat in the eyes of most Americans. In a 2019 Pew Survey, less than a quarter of Americans saw China as the US’ major threat. In Gallup polls, Americans saw a broad range of other threats as more critical than China’s military or economic rise. In the YouGov survey, a quarter of Americans found Trump the biggest threat to global peace among world leaders.

Around the world, climate change is increasingly recognised as our biggest threat. Indeed, it was seen as the top threat by half the nations in a 2018 Pew survey. In the same survey, China was ranked the lowest among threats.

The Paris Agreement set the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius – 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible – which would entail drastic emissions cuts this decade. With nations’ uneven embrace and implementation of this target so far, the world is heading for a disastrous 3 to 4 Celsius rise.