Where do you gather that from? They use more coal than the entirety of the rest of the world combined. Their coal usage has more than doubled over the past ~15 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-environmen...
> Now Beijing is trying to slow things down.
> In guidelines released on Monday, China halted plans for new coal-fired power stations in many parts of the country, and construction of some approved plants will be postponed until at least 2018.
Whether this will amount to anything, who can say?
China gets over 70% of its electricity from coal. Yes, they are building more solar but it'll take over a decade for there to be significant change.
Anyway, the real problem is that even if everyone somehow meets the Paris limits, it's not enough.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539691/china-will-soon-le...
A 5x increase in 15-20 years gets you to 10-15%. While that's good, I don't think it's enough given the current rate of CO2 production. It's hard to complain because they're doing a lot more than everyone else. Unfortunately, we need to find a way to do more.
This too, additional to other links. Meat consumption has a huge carbon footprint.
Their government institutions see the problem and invent guidelines. We'll see the same stuff from the USA, most likely never.
So at what point does the rest of the world intervene?
Solar is fine though, once it paid back its energy production debt. I think bio-fuels should be taxed for the undoing of the distributed damage.
Mixed feelings never make for good punchlines :.)
1) China is already convinced. It's in the article. They are the world-leading user of solar power and are pushing harder than anyone to get away from dirty power.
2) Trump wants to push and invest in dirty power. He wants to significantly increase the production of coal and gas. The very stuff that causes global warming. Convincing Trump is about saving the world from itself. If Trump has his way, the last 20 years of progress towards renewable energy will be wiped out, with a strong possibility of making life very difficult for humanity in the next 50 - 100 years.