China’s 2019 greenhouse gas emissions exceeded those of the United States and other major developed countries combined, said a report released Thursday (May 6) by U.S. economic consulting firm Rhodium Group.
Cooling towers at a coal-powered power plant on the outskirts of Beijing on Nov. 22, 2011.
China accounted for 27 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, the report said, taking first place; the United States was second with about 11 percent of global emissions, followed by India with 6.6 percent and the European Union with 6.4 percent.
According to the report, China’s per capita emissions have nearly tripled over the past 20 years to 10.1 tons; however, China’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are still far lower than those of the United States, which, at 17.6 tons per capita, has the highest per capita emissions in the world.
“While final global data for 2020 are not yet available, we expect China’s per capita emissions in 2020 to exceed the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average; while almost all other countries’ emissions have fallen sharply in the wake of the Chinese Communist Virus (COVID-19) pandemic, China’s net (greenhouse gas) emissions have increased by about 1.7 percent .” the report reads.
Another complicating context is that it took much less time for China to jump to major emitter status than other OECD countries, plus the cumulative CO2 emissions of OECD countries since 1750 are only four times that of China.
Because a large portion of annual CO2 emissions are absorbed into the Earth’s carbon cycle in the decades following their release, the report says, this certainly overstates the relative contribution of pre-industrial revolution OECD emissions to a global temperature rise of more than 1 degree Celsius.
In other words, China, which is emitting large amounts of CO2, has a ways to go before it can surpass the OECD on a cumulative emissions reduction basis.
The analysis comes at a time when the Biden administration is seeking the cooperation of the Chinese Communist government on its international emissions reduction targets. John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, has repeatedly stressed that emissions reduction efforts will be meaningless without the commitment of China and Communist Party President Xi Jinping.
“I think there’s hope. Because China is a very important player in this,” Kerry told Indian media in April, “and we hope that China will come to the table and take a leadership role. President Xi has talked about (climate change) leadership and talked about China’s role in that.”
Texas U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R) tweeted Thursday that “Communist China is the world’s worst polluter and we can’t believe that it will do anything to change its course.”
“Addressing our changing climate requires real solutions, but we can’t pretend that those agreements – toothless (and unbound) agreements with giant polluters like Communist China – will do anything to move work can do.” He added.
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