President Obama's bold international diplomacy is paying
big dividends:
The Chinese government announced Wednesday it would cap coal use by 2020. The Chinese State Council, or cabinet, said the peak would be 4.2 billion tonnes, a one-sixth increase over current consumption.
This is a staggering reversal of Chinese energy policy, which for two decades has been centered around building a coal plant or more a week. Now they’ll be building the equivalent in carbon-free power every week for decades, while the construction rate of new coal plants decelerates like a crash-test dummy.
The 2020 coal peak utterly refutes the GOP claim that China’s recent climate pledge “requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years.” Indeed, independent analyses make clear a 2020 coal peak announcement was the inevitable outcome of China’s game-changing climate deal deal with the U.S. last week, where China agreed to peak its total carbon pollution emissions in 2030 — or earlier.
This was an historic moment, and it also puts pressure on other large polluters to do their part. But China already is stepping up. And of course, the Republicans were furious that the agreement was even made. Find out what the climate scientists are saying, and how the Republicans are responding, over the fold.
Climate scientist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert already wrote that the agreement with China is the Real Deal. Climate scientist Michael Mann (audio) agrees. So does ClimateNexus. So do even more climate scientists and climate activists. Of course, the fine folks at Fox "News" had a tantrum:
It’s long been conservatives’ favorite argument against climate action: China’s not going to do anything, so why should we bother trying? With Tuesday’s announcement that the U.S. and China have reached a historic deal to cut carbon emissions, their tune has changed.
It was only the previous evening that Fox News guest Charles Krauthammer said Obama should push for a climate agreement with China, that “if we get one with China we have something real.” That echoed Krauthammer’s comments last week that “if he gets an agreement with China, which he won’t, but that’s the one area it would be historic.” Since that’s become a reality, Fox News wasn’t sure what to say Wednesday morning.
Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy asked Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, “is the agreement just a sign that China has a hold on us?” She then delivered a particularly bizarre take on the agreement:
And the Senate Republican "leadership"?
China Tries to Save Earth; Republicans Furious
It would be nice to think that evidence like today’s pact would at least soften the GOP’s unyielding certainty about the absolute impossibility of a global climate accord. The near-total refusal of the right to reconsider its denial of the theory of anthropogenic global warming sadly suggests otherwise. James Inhofe, the incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a fervent climate science skeptic, has quickly dismissed the deal as a “hollow and not believable" and a “non-binding charade.”
Mitch McConnell adds his own diplomatic insight. “As I read the agreement, it requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years.” That is an extremely ignorant way to read the agreement. The apparent basis for his belief is that China’s highly ambitious targets apply in 2030, so McConnell seems to believe China can do nothing until then, and perhaps pull a huge New Year’s Eve 2030 all-nighter frantically replacing thousands of coal plants with nuclear and solar. If McConnell reads the agreement more carefully, or even consults with people who understand how environmental accords work, he might realize that other countries have ways of tracking your progress and calculating whether you’re on track to meet a future emissions target. More likely he would just come up with a different soundbite to justify his position.
Thanks to the lowest turnout in an American election since 1942, it's going to be a very rough couple of years. But President Obama is showing strong leadership on the
most important issue humanity has
ever faced, even in the face of Republican obstructionism. The world's leaders are moving forward, even as the Republicans try to stop them from moving anywhere at all.