China’s climate games

Chinese officials have demonstrated often enough that they are the ultimate ‘climate change’ artists. At the Beijing Olympics of 2008, and during the celebration earlier this year to mark the 60th anniversary of China’s founding, Beijing’s weather modification bureau officials demonstrably changed the skies over the capital city from a muggy grey to a shining blue, to the wonderment of the world. 

Ahead of next week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen, Chinese policymakers have demonstrated that they are equally skilled at the smoke-and-mirrors game that will see China spew ever more toxic waste into the atmosphere over the next 10 years, and yet pass it off to the world as a significant contribution that advances clean-energy initiatives.

Indian climate-change policymakers have been comprehensively bamboozled by China’s political games of the past two months. In the process, along with other leading ‘developing countries’, India has allowed itself to be used by China as a shield to defend itself against justifiably trenchant criticism that was due in Copenhagen to end its slow-poisoning of the world.

To get some perspective on this, it helps to zoom out and get an overview. In the months leading up to Copenhagen, the heat really was on the world’s two leading emitters of greenhouse gases — the US and China — to lead the way on climate-change initiatives. To be fair to both countries, they’ve initiated some efforts, including some joint initiatives, that go some way towards addressing this global concern. Yet, when it comes to setting and abiding by emissions reduction targets, both have proved more than a little delinquent.  

Although China is a monstrous polluter, as a developing country it was given a ‘free pass’: It did not have to take any quantified actions to reduce its carbon emissions because even the developed economies, including the US, had not delivered on their reduction ‘commitments’.

Along with other ‘developing economies’, including India, China insisted that its clean-energy efforts should be paid for and otherwise supported — with, for instance, technology transfers — by rich economies. So far, so good: Although India and China were in vastly different leagues as polluters, they were in the same camp when it came to pressing for international funding for clean-energy initiatives. 

But China’s ‘free pass’ was at risk of being revoked at Copenhagen. There has in recent months been a movement to ‘decouple’ China from the category of other developing nations, given the perception that it was better placed — as the world’s third largest economy, and the fastest growing major economy — to contribute to mitigation efforts. Other developing nations, including India, were to be made primary beneficiaries for international funding to support clean-energy and other climate-change mitigation efforts. 

It may perhaps have been unflattering to India to be retained in the category of ‘developing economies’ and to see China being ‘promoted’ to the league of developed economies that were required to fund their own clean-energy initiatives. But it’s reflective of some realities: China’s economy is over three times bigger than India’s. And such an arrangement would’ve  rightly ‘penalised’ China, on course to be the world’s biggest polluter.  

It was to avert this eventuality that China moved fast, roping India into its stratagem . In October, when India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh went public with his stand that India must  agree to some emission reduction targets, China sensed a breaking of the developing economies’ ranks. It paused long enough from its hectoring of India over the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh to suddenly signal a solidarity of interests: It sent its minister to New Delhi and got India to sign an agreement that the two countries would ‘work together’ to address climate change. 

Commentary in India naively misinterpreted this as a manifestation of China’s commitment to the cause of developing economies. They were doubly dumbfounded, therefore, when last fortnight China announced a voluntary pledge to trim its carbon intensity by 40 to 45% by 2020. That claim was well received by those who couldn’t see that it was a smokescreen. It’s been estimated that even with a 40% cut in carbon intensity, China’s emissions in the absolute sense will increase by over 200% by 2020. 

And just last week, China invited Ramesh to Beijing, along with ministers from Brazil and South Africa, signed a joint agreement under which the four leading ‘developing economies’ would walk out together from the Copenhagen talks if the heat was turned on them. That too was part of the gameplan.

China, which was at risk of being ‘decoupled’ from the developing economies’ club at Copenhagen and being held accountable for its polluting, has effectively taken the moral high ground with a ‘carbon intensity’ reduction target under which it will pollute even more — and has used India and others as a shield to deflect likely criticism away from itself.