This is not true. From 2001 to 2011 China almost tripled their emissions, but after 2011 they haven't grown almost at all. It's stable. Maybe you haven't looked at the data in the past 10 years?
But now that the US basically proven to be untrustworthy, even towards allies, these kind of deals are just undoable anymore.
This will end in tears
Developing nations have a claim. It's deeply unfair that wealthy nations who have emitted a lot of carbon get permission to keep emitting more as a result. But also.. if developing nations fully stake this claim by increasing their emissions or even flatlining then the game is lost.
This is the problem with thinking in absolutes. The alternative is making some concessions and moving forward regardless because of belief in the mission. Europe is already in the same per capita ballpark as china. If the US/Australia/etc had gotten themselves near this per capita level, the politics of developed/developing economies would have softened somewhat. The fairness issues aren't as sharp once emissions are similar.
Realistically, we are not politically structured (as a world) to deal with carbon reduction well. Nationalism is the dominant paradigm both structurally/politically and ideologically. It's a weak paradigm for global action.
I emphasize the politics over the economics, though obviously both intertwine. Long term, there are economic upsides as well as downsides to carbon reduction. As a blind (long) bet, I'd always bet on new energy paradigms being a good thing. The long tail upside is especially interesting. Within a functioning polity, that's something you can work. The world isn't.
It’s a deal that’s been hijacked by business interests; just like the Cali proposition written by Uber that’s “for drivers”.
You will never get a hundred countries to voluntarily agree to prioritising climate change over prioritising business interests.
Was the US ever trustworthy?
China has shown time and time again that China will do what China feels like doing.
Meaning them committing to doing something 10 years doesn't mean they will do it at all.
We clearly don't really care about climate change or stuff like this would be about taxing pollution through tariffs and other means. Rules like this just move the manufacturing and thus pollution to different countries. Which is pointless when the goal is to reduce climate change.
They actually know, understand, and to some degree care, that they're basically 1/5th of the world's population and if they don't get pollution under control the entire world will burn.
That is a reality under pretty much any regime in the truest sense of the words meaning, which contrary to popular use is not negative but rather descriptive.
They care in the sense that: the whole world burns - China is part of the world - China will burn - their citizens will riot making 1989 look like child's play - the CCP will go up in flames, too. Cynical logic, but logic nonetheless.
They don't care in the "care bear" sense.
Yes you can. The world's problems are not really personified entities, where hypocrisy is a valid concern. China is a problem.
Think about it, they have more people than the US, Canada, the EU, UK, Russia and Australia combined. That's some major need for energy, which everyone else just blames on "China".
I think they're doing pretty well in comparison.
While I'm at it, I need to mention their one child policy basically stopped hundreds of millions people from ever existing. A whole lot of pollution that never happened. Something no other country has done, and I think China should have some recognition for that.
Wouldn't it be better to instead let the developing world leapfrog fossil fuel energy generation, and go straight to renewables (and possibly nuclear)? By e.g. donating technology, IP and expertise, and otherwise incentivize them to skip the dirty tech, at no loss in QoL improvements of their citizens?
There is a question of follow through as they are still building new coal power plants, but China is making noises that its going commit to changing. The US is not a leader on this issue any more.
But how? The manufacturing that went overseas did so for cost reasons. If you make it even more expensive then there is even less incentive to have it here. Dismantling the economies of the east from afar is not an option for a ton of reasons.
In the current system, however, a country who keeps their population low will have small allowances; It clearly incentives overpopulating its land. This inverse-incentive effect may provoke countries into doing nothing against evergrowing population, keeping cost of life too affordable, and thus, ensuring that the next generation will be overpopulated, and thus, extenuating the land.
Is this factual? They committed to peaking in 2030. Stopping at the stop sign is a radically different concept from starting to brake at the stop sign.
Agreed. It is possible to simultaneously believe "we need to cut emissions" and "the Paris accord is a bad way to do it". But it seems many people think Paris is the only way to do it.
The issue is rather that nobody really brings up any valid alternatives when they disagree with Paris.
Saying "bring manufacturing back" is not an valid alternative, it's wishful thinking that ignores how this current situation came about, while offering zero actual actionable advise how to reverse that development and fix the problem itself.
Manufacturing went to China because of laxer regulations there making it more cost-effective, how are you gonna convince it to come back to the US and EU with even harsher regulations?
Easy. Tariffs on Chinese imports so its cheaper to manufacture cleanly back home.
If that works at all, it only works in disincentivizing manufacturing in China.
That doesn't bring manufacturing "back home", it only brings it to other countries similar or even lower in standards as China, are you gonna tariff those too?
Err, yes, obviously. There aren't an infinite number of countries in the world. You could quite comfortably track all the countries that do and do not comply with Western environmental laws in Excel. Or declare a free trade area the conditions of entry to which are compliance. This is a very very easy problem to solve... once we wean ourselves off the cheap tat China produces.
It's not really that obvious because an escalating global trade-war is rarely good for anybody, and tariffs only end up costing the consumers.
That's also why even after years of Trump tariffs on China, and all kinds of other countries, there was still no major shift of manufacturing back to the US.
> This is a very very easy problem to solve... once we wean ourselves off the cheap tat China produces
That "cheap tat" is by now a globally unique industry [0] that took decades to be built, by a government that can centrally plan in the decades. You can't just replace something like that from one day to another, and it most certainly wouldn't be easy.
Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we were solving the problem.
The optimal strategy to combat Global Warming is to bring manufacturing back to the EU and US and regulate emissions strongly.