China Climate Change Plan to Establish Carbon Market
China Climate Change Plan to Establish Carbon Market
Tuesday, 19 Dec 2017
A man waits for a bus on a polluted day in Beijing on Dec. 20, 2016. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)
China's climate change plan announced Tuesday would create the world's largest financial market dedicated to cleaning up the air, according to The New York Times .
Under the plan, the communist country would start a large market to trade credits for its right to emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, the Times said. The market would cover only China's state-owned power generator sector, which produces nearly half of the country's emissions from fossil fuel.
While the Chinese government did not give a hard deadline and other details, environmental groups with a history of working with the country told the Times that it could come in the next couple of years.
Environmental nonprofit the Environmental Defense Fund said that the program has the potential to cover some 5 billion metric tons of CO2, which would account for roughly 15 percent of total global emissions once fully implemented.
"The world has never before seen a climate program on this scale," Fund president Fred Krupp said, according to the website Business Green . "It is important that the world's largest emitter should lead on climate, and that is precisely what China is doing by launching its national emissions trading system. China has stepped up its climate leadership dramatically in recent years, and is now increasingly seen as filling the leadership void left by the U.S."
President Trump announced in June that the U.S. would be walking away from the landmark climate agreement signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, CNN reported .
Former vice president and climate change advocate Al Gore said in a statement that China's announcement means that a "global sustainability revolution is underway."
"With the top global polluter enacting policies to support the Paris Agreement and transition to a low carbon economy, it is clear that we’re at a tipping point in the climate crisis," Gore said in his statement.
"Economic opportunities will flow to those countries who establish leadership in the markets of the future. American states, cities, businesses, investors, and citizens understand this opportunity. Leaders everywhere must choose to either act to solve the climate crisis, or watch their nations fall behind," he continued.
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When my wife and I had to go to Beijing about a year ago to visit the Canadian Embassy to renew my passport, we wore masks like those in the picture. Where we are living now far to the south is misty, but not polluted.
The Paris climate debacle would have placed the whole burden of cleaning up the planet on the US, who would have paid large sums to those countries who pollute much more to not pollute, if they felt like it, when they got around it years into the future. And of course, no penalties for non compliance or missed targets.
China fills the leadership void left by America...