“China is now leading the world when it comes to fighting climate change – handily beating the US’s efforts under Barack Obama,” said Figueres, according to the Guardian.
This is not just mean-spirited, but also highly misleading. Between 2000 and 2014 China increased its CO2 emissions 178% while the US decreased its emissions by 6%. China’s CO2 emissions per capita are triple (2.95) those of the US. And China is now causing
between 0.5 and 1.5 million premature deaths per year with its coal smog.Moreover, Obama has fought hard against the Republicans to help the climate; he actually is concerned with climate change. And this is where Figueres gets it completely backwards.
What the Chinese government is doing is not because they want to slow climate change. Instead they have been slowly caving in to public pressure to clean up their smog. Their INDC is actually just their domestic energy policy which was formulated before they talked climate with Obama. It’s purely designed to fix local problems.
Figueres likes to give the UN credit for everything that happens to help the climate, even if it has nothing to do with the UN. And she likes to bash the US, but she should stick to bashing Republicans instead of her long-suffering allies.