China's Climate Change Con Carries On

And the U.S. keeps falling for it.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — China has been running a climate change con against the rest of the world for at least a decade now. The latest moves in that con took place at the G20 meeting in Bali and the COP27 United Nations climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Here's how the most recent round played out. Back in August, China "suspended" climate talks with the U.S. in retaliation for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's (D–Calif.) visit to Taiwan. President Joe Biden went to Bali, where he appealed to Chinese President Xi Jinping to reengage with the U.S. on climate change issues. Xi magnanimously assented.

"The U.S. side is committed to keeping the channels of communication open between the two presidents and at all levels of government" so as to "strengthen necessary cooperation and play a key role in addressing climate change, food security and other important global challenges," according to the official Chinese government statement. "The two countries will jointly work for the success of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change." This supposed breakthrough was widely hailed by officials and activists alike.

"I welcome today's agreement between China and the USA to work together to take more ambitious #ClimateAction in this decade," tweeted U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. "This unequivocal signal from the two largest economies to work together to address the climate crisis is more than welcome; it's essential," Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said to Euronews. Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute, told The Washington Post, "I think it's very significant, very positive." He added, "From our perspective, not only are they the biggest emitters, but…it matters to what happens in the rest of the negotiations."

Let's take a brief look at previous U.S.-China climate change agreements. Back in 2014, President Barack Obama and Xi with great fanfare issued a "joint announcement" on climate change. The announcement was hailed by most environmental groups and much of the media as "historic," a "breakthrough," and a "game-changer." Parsing the agreement, it turns out that China gave away nothing and just reaffirmed its previously announced goal of peaking its emissions around 2030. As it happens, futurist Brian Wang over at the NextBigFuture.com calculated in 2014 that China's carbon dioxide emissions would increase from about 10 billion tons then to as much as 14.7 billion tons by 2020. China's emissions are basically right on track, rising to 14.3 billion tons in 2021.

In 2015, at the U.N. climate conference where the Paris Agreement was completed, China merely reiterated its "pledge" to peak its emissions by 2030, which would likely mean that it would be emitting 60 percent more greenhouse gases by then. That's where the state of play remained after former President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

After Biden reinstated U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, his administration began seeking another joint agreement on climate with China. Subsequently, another supposed breakthrough was duly announced at the U.N.'s Glasgow climate conference last November, where U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and China's climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua issued the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s. In that declaration, China promised that it "will phase down coal consumption during the 15th Five Year Plan and make best efforts to accelerate this work." The 15th Five Year plan runs from 2026–30, and that's exactly the same promise that Xi had made earlier at the Leaders Summit on Climate convened by Biden in April 2021. The joint declaration was described as a "stage-managed nothingburger."

By comparison, the Chinese statements from Bali promising to "keep channels of communication open" and "strengthen necessary cooperation" make a nothingburger look tasty. China's climate change con still has at least eight years to run.

Comments

[IceTrey]

The entire climate change argument is a con.

[JasonAZ]

Bingo

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[Don't look at me!]

This

[HorseConch]

Don't tell Bailey.

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[Public Entelectual]

Ron's reporting from Egypt, not China.

COP-27 is no con, it's the Grift of the Nile.

https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/11/climate-depot-denial-dynasty-gets-nasty.html

[Dillinger]

>>the U.S. keeps falling for it

American oligarchs benefit financially from it.

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[williamhoke]

Hello,

China's development and climate change are deeply and increasingly intertwined. The country is a contributor to rising global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is severely affected by its adverse impacts. Alongside other larger emitters, China's contribution to reducing global climate risks is therefore crucial.

Regards: when is baby too big for bassinet

[Social Justice is neither]

"We" don't keep falling for anything, you leftists (Bailey, Biden, Obama) keep playing along and those of you in power keep shoveling money at the scam to skim a bit off the top and buy elections.

[JasonAZ]

Bingo x2

[Jima]

Bingo x3

[Jerry B.]

And their fellow believers believe it most of all.

[Mickey Rat]

Yes, Bailey should understand that Biden, Kerry et al, are not the ones being conned, they are in on the scam. The actual marks, the US citizenry, have no direct control over the decision.

[Mother's Lament]

I’m less worried about China’s climate con than all the Western government's.

[JasonAZ]

Bingo x3

[Inquisitive Squirrel]

This, right here.

[Don't look at me!]

Moar testing needed!

[MT-Man]

Rapid CO2 tests.

[Sevo]

And MASKS!

[Overt]

"And the U.S. keeps falling for it."

Please. The State Department and Biden administration are part of the Con.

This is very simple: No one is going to sign up to eating bugs and vat-cultured algae instead of beef; pay 20% more for their luxury electric cars; install thermostats in their house that shut off the ac in the peak of a heatwave; pay 30% more for their gas; put pipeline workers and oil-drillers and coal miners out of work; pay a premium for the stock of companies with a SuperLeeds ESG Certification- they aren't going to do any of these things if it is clear that their sacrifice means nothing compared to what China (and India, and Brazil) do in the next 10 years.

It's a simple fact that any climate change over the next 50 years will be primarily driven by the growth of Developing countries, and no conversion to Cricket Chow in the US will change that. And so politicians are happy to go shake Whinny the Poo's hand and exclaim, "Don't worry, we got China under control. We've signed agreements and made commitments. Now ignore them and go buy a Chevy Bolt!"

[Minadin]

It sounds like mtruemann might actually sign up for all of that.

[A Cynical Asshole]

No, mtrueman will gladly sign everyone else up for all of that. He probably thinks he'll be one of the elites chowing down on real beef and sipping champagne. Imagine his surprise when he finds that he'll be one of the first against a wall after the "glorious people's revolution" or whatever.

[Overt]

I'm actually shocked mtrueman isn't in here. Usually an article like this is all you need to get him off waxing euphoric about the Long March.

[A Cynical Asshole]

No one is going to sign up to eating bugs and vat-cultured algae instead of beef; pay 20% more for their luxury electric cars; install thermostats in their house that shut off the ac in the peak of a heatwave; pay 30% more for their gas; put pipeline workers and oil-drillers and coal miners out of work...

Don't forget about the part where you get to sanctimoniously get on your high horse and tell those out of work blue collar types to "learn to code." That's the best part: there's nothing more exhilarating to our "betters" than feeling superior to filthy, dirty, non-college educated men.

[BigT]

any climate change over the next 50 years will be primarily driven by the growth of Developing countries,

No, climate is driven almost completely by natural causes.

[Beezard]

Pollution and plastic dumpage, etc. would still work, though. That’s waaay Indian subcontinent/East Asia going through their industrial revolution.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

This nonsense about "we" keep falling for it brings to mind wondering how much better foreign relations would be without treaties, embassies, ambassadors, and all that government-to-government cronyism.

Foreign aid is pretty puny, but it is straight-up cronyism, robbing the US poor to enrich foreign despots. Imagine instead they depended on direct charity going straight to the foreign poor. Despots would still get their hands on a lot of it, but the more they grabbed, the less would be sent.

Instead of foreign despots trying to trick American despots, they'd have to tell a lot more truth to trick the American public. Instead of trying to gauge American politicians' opinions, they'd have a huge variety of public opinion polls to tell them how their propaganda is working.

[A Cynical Asshole]

China's Climate Change Con Carries On
And the U.S. keeps falling for it.

That's because we're run by a bunch of retards. Either that or they're in on the con and are positioned to profit handsomely at the expense of everyone else.

[Jima]

Pretty sure it's both.

[DRM]

Well, now. Obama fell for it, and Biden fell for it, but do you notice who didn't fall for it?

[perlmonger]

But his Tweet emissions, man!

[zombietimeshare]

"China has been running a climate change con against the rest of the world for at least a decade now."

The Onion nailed this years ago in 2014.
China Vows To Begin Aggressively Falsifying Air Pollution Numbers
https://www.theonion.com/china-vows-to-begin-aggressively-falsifying-air-polluti-1819577216

“China is strongly committed to the goal of claiming its greenhouse gas output has been cut in half by 2030. We will work tirelessly to exaggerate, manipulate, and in many cases flat-out lie about the amount of pollutants Chinese factories and energy plants release into the atmosphere. That is our unwavering pledge.”

[Libertariantranslator]

The Onion got its facts straight, as usual. The root problem is that even competent electrical engineers like Tony Heller suck up to girl-bullying televangelists. Thus scientists lose track of reality, and spout carpetbiting mystical gibberish. Finally Joe Sixpack becomes convinced that Red China and scientist-impersonating Econazis have the more convincing patter and votes to ban energy.

[The Obsolete Man]

Climate change politics have always been a ruse to weaken the Western world against powers like China. Not a world I care to live in

[Lurker Kurt]

I, for one, am shocked that China would lie about something as serious as Climate Change!!

[Sevo]

"China's Climate Change Con Carries On"

As does the UN's.

[Inquisitive Squirrel]

Isn't everyone's climate change con carrying on? Has some of the con finally stopped somewhere?

[StephanieSmith]

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[jagjr]

now do Taiwan policy!! (spoiler alert - same con)

[Roger Knights]

Unilateral climate action by the West would be costly and futile virtue signaling (not that that would seem like a bug to green activists personally), so the illusion of global cooperation must be maintained to keep the publics in the West on board with the great crusade. So the clerisy in the West plays along with China’s baloney.

[Libertariantranslator]

China's monarchy made pyramids of severed heads to stop the importation of flower sap AND stop locals from competing with British white devils by cultivating flower gardens. In 4 wars more of them were killed than the entire US population including redskins and eskimos. By boycotting US exports 1903-1906 the Imperial government made Uncle Sam the world's policeman to ban EVERYTHING the slightest bit enjoyable, no matter the cost in germ wars, famine, financial collapse, economic depressions and World Wars. The Kleptocracy now writes Red Chinese policy into laws against American access to energy.

[Ride 'Em]

It the smaller lie to protect the bigger lie.

[TJJ2000]

Whats this? Biden's a big fan of all Energy being monopolized by totalitarian governments?

[Libertariantranslator]

Climate Warmunism, falsifying data, ignoring the warnings of over 35,000 degreed scientists, and enacting laws to allow only totalitarian dictatorships to have access to energy--that's the one thing Donald Trump is right about. But republican politicians--innocent of even the simplest definition of energy or power--instead issued fatwas for a jihad against plant leaves, twigs, seeds, drag queens, Jews, foreigners, mushrooms and cacti. Remember that when monopoly utility bills are twice your income.

[Beezard]

“Social sustainability” (DEI) is part of the same global con and power grab. If by “Drag Queens” you mean guys who started reading time with kids specifically on the basis of neo-Marxist Queer Theory, then it’s arguably a different head of the same hydra. And it’s schools who are churning out the foot soldiers for climate Justice. So the culture war is not as ancillary as it may seem.

[mpercy]

My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on climate science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort of thing, but far more often the "solution" is just a cloak hiding the proposer's socialist SJW motives.

For example, let's look at the IPCC report on climate change...Let's see...it doesn't seem to be about the effect of climate on plants and animals (and humans). It does mention climatey things...It said that without action to address the problem, by the year 2100, hundreds of millions of people could be affected by coastal flooding and displaced due to land loss. "Impacts from recent extreme climatic events, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and wildfires, show significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to climate variability," the report warned.

But mainly, the IPCC report seems to be about poverty and income inequality and funding needed to address it.

The report also said climate change had the largest impact on people who are socially and economically marginalized. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low and lower-middle income countries, including high mountain states, countries at risk from sea-level rise, and countries with indigenous peoples, and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries in which inequality is increasing," [the report] said.

But funding needed to offset the impact of climate change is lacking, the report warned, saying developing countries would need between $70 billion to $100 billion a year to implement needed measures. And efforts to reduce the effects of climate change would only have a marginal effect on reducing poverty unless "structural inequalities are addressed and needs for equity among poor and nonpoor people are met."

It's not about climate change or environmentalism, and it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.

(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): "Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”

Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Daphne Muller, green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon: "This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet."

Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."

David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."

Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government."

Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”

Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."

Researcher Robert Phalen's 2010 testimony to the California Air Resources Board: "It benefits us personally to have the public be afraid, even if these risks are trivial."

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, made the revealing admission in a meeting with Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s climate director in May. A Washington Post reporter accompanied Chakrabarti to the meeting for a magazine profile published Wednesday: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all...Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.

[mpercy]

If "climate change" people want to talk seriously about reducing CO2 emissions with scrubbers or catalytic converters, or want to talk about nuclear power, or how to build up a resilient and reliable grid that would be able to support an all-electric US economy on all-electric, or carbon capture technologies, or desalination, or space-based microwave-delivered power, any number of things, I'm happy to talk about those because those are aiming at being a "solution". There is no "solution" ever to be found in the climate change problem by taking money away from "rich" people or countries and giving it to people and countries.

Which is largely what the IPCC proceedings on climate change actually talks about. The IPCC is the ultimate global authority on the subject of climate change. They do a fantastic job of documenting the observed changes and presenting lots of models about the potential changes. But then they spend as much time addressing poverty and inequality as they do talking about actual solutions (and most of the "solutions" proposed take the form of getting government force people to emit less CO2, by any means required...they call it "behaviour- and lifestyle- related measures" and "demand-side management" but what they really mean is "Enabling this investment requires the mobilization and better integration of a range of policy instruments that include the reduction of socially inefficient fossil fuel subsidy regimes and innovative price and non-price national and international policy instruments.") The whole report is basically about money, money controlled by governments...

E.g., a whole chapter on

Chapter 5: Sustainable Development, Poverty Eradication and Reducing Inequalities — IPCC

Why is this even a topic for the IPCC? And it's not limited to one chapter in the report, either...

Enabling Rapid and Far-Reaching Change

The speed of transitions and of technological change required to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels has been observed in the past within specific sectors and technologies {4.2.2.1}. But the geographical and economic scales at which the required rates of change in the energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems would need to take place are larger and have no documented historic precedent (limited evidence, medium agreement). To reduce inequality and alleviate poverty, such transformations would require more planning and stronger institutions (including inclusive markets) than observed in the past, as well as stronger coordination and disruptive innovation across actors and scales of governance.