Climate change summit’s 5 big players – their eco-attitudes and green plans for future – World News

The leaders of the world’s most polluting countries have come together for a two day climate summit.

Prime ministers and presidents from across the world are being virtually hosted by US President Joe Biden for the climate conference on Earth Day.

It comes ahead of the crucial COP26 meeting, in Glasgow in November, where progress in cutting emissions and adopting means of green energy production will be assessed.

A key part of this week’s summit and COP26 is the Paris Climate Agreement, which was adopted by 196 countries in 2015.

Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5C, compared to pre-industrial levels, by giving each country targets to hit.

Even if all of them are met – which current progress means they will not be – then sea levels will continue to rise, there will be more heatwaves and extreme rainstorms, and more people will not have enough water to drink or food to eat.

With the climate summit underway, we’ve analysed five of the biggest players, their impacts so far and what they’ve pledged to do.

China

The presence of China’s president Xi Jinping at the summit – even if it is via video – is hugely significant.

In terms of geo-political relations, it marks the first occasion Xi and Biden have met as leaders following tension over China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

Today Xi called for a “people-centred” approach to the climate crisis.

He said: “We must treat nature as our root, respect it, protect it and follow its laws, we should protect nature and preserve the environment like we protect our eyes.

“Second, we must be committed to green development – green mountains are gold mountains, to protect the environment is to protect productivity and to boost the environment is to boost productivity.”

When it comes to climate change, China is the most significant player on the global stage and has the potential to make the biggest impact.

The country, with its enormous manufacturing capacity which produces and ships products across the world, accounts for roughly a quarter of global emissions.

When it came to the Paris Climate Agreement, it pledged to reach peak emissions and shift at least 20 per cent of its energy production to renewables by 2030.

China has done well when it comes to investing in renewables and has pumped much of its half a trillion dollar pandemic stimulus money into green infrastructure such as charging points and high speed rail.

Much less positive is the country’s return to building coal power plants.

After lifting a previous construction ban on new coal plants in 2018, China is going against the global shift away from the dirty energy source and now possesses roughly half of the world’s coal power capacity.

Steel, cement, and heavy manufacturing backed by coal plants boosted China’s carbon dioxide emissions by four percent in the second half of 2020 – with the country already accounting for 28 per cent of global CO2 pumped into the atmosphere.

In introducing 38.4 gigawatts of coal power in 2020, China brought on line triple the entire global figure for that year.

If the country is to hit its targets then it has to find a cleaner form of energy than coal.

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT) rates China as being “highly insufficient” when it comes to hitting the 1.5C temperature increase or less, instead judging it to be on track to bring about a 4C rise if all other countries were to follow in its footsteps.

The UK

Boris Johnson is expected to come out all guns blazing at the summit and nail the UK firmly to the ‘let’s not destroy the planet’ mast.

The PM will tell the meeting: “The UK has shown that it’s possible to slash emissions while growing the economy, which makes the question of reaching net zero not so much technical as political.

“If we actually want to stop climate change, then this must be the year in which we get serious about doing so.

“Because the 2020s will be remembered either as the decade in which world leaders united to turn the tide, or as a failure.”

In the past week the UK has committed to huge CO2 cuts as it gears up to host the UN COP26 climate summit in November.

Johnson pledged a 78 per cent fall by 2035 compared to 1990 levels, having previously targeted a 68 per cent reduction by 2030.

For the first time, climate law will be extended to cover international aviation and shipping as the UK bids to hit net-zero emissions by 2050.

The country is not sitting pretty when it comes to hitting these targets however, in no small part due to investment and policy making.

To date only two per cent of the economic recovery funds from the pandemic have been allocated towards climate related measures, compared to 30 per cent for the EU.

In July 2020, as part of the country’s Covid-19 economic recovery package, the government announced a £3 billion investment for improving the energy efficiency of homes and public buildings.

This is far less than the £9.2 billion pledged for this purpose during the 2019 election campaign.

Along with a £350 million investment in reducing emissions from heavy industry, these are the only significant climate-related investments in the recovery announced so far.

According to CAT the UK has a lot of work to do when it comes to cutting emissions from its most polluting sector – transport – which remain just below 1990 levels.

More positively, in the past 12 months legislative announcements include a £2 billion investment to improve cycling and walking infrastructure, the reversal of a 2015 ban on onshore wind and solar PV projects from competing in renewable energy tenders, the bringing forward of a 2040 ban on fossil fuel vehicles to 2035, and a ban on the installation of gas boilers in new homes from 2025.

CAT judges the UK to be insufficient and currently on track to contribute to a 3C global temperature increase.

The US

The climate summit started with a bang when Joe Biden pledged to slash US greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, a new target it hopes will spur other big emitter countries to raise their ambition to combat climate change.

The goal has been set after former President Donald Trump withdrew the country from international efforts to cut emissions.

The emissions cuts are expected to come from power plants, automobiles, and other sectors across the economy, but the White House did not set individual targets for those industries.

“This is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis,” Biden said at the White House.

The new US target nearly doubles former President Barack Obama’s pledge of an emissions cut of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Biden is right to be ambitious, given the awful position the US is in in terms of emissions.

The average American produced 15 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases per person in 2019, the second highest per capita figure after Canada, with the country second only to China in total output – 15 per cent of the global total.

CAT has ranked the US as critically insufficient and – if all other countries followed its lead – in line to bring about a 4C global temperature increase.

The situation was in no way helped by Donald Trump, who legislated to allow polluting industries to produce more emissions and cut penalties for rule violations.

Biden has set about trying to right some of these wrongs by re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement which Trump left.

Among the new President’s plans, as outlined during his electoral campaign, are an emissions-free power sector by 2035, upgrading four million buildings to meet the highest energy efficiency standards and drive innovation and cost reduction in critical clean energy technologies including battery storage and green hydrogen.

Japan

Today Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga laid out a 2030 target of cutting Japan’s emissions by 46 per cent from the country’s 2013 level.

“A goal of 46 per cent in reductions would mean that Japan will raise our current target by more than 70 per cent and it will certainly not be an easy task,” Suga told the summit.

The announcement constitutes a step change for Japan, which has fallen behind European countries when it comes to cutting emissions.

The European Union logged a 22.5 per cent reduction between 1990 and 2018, compared with just 2.5 per cent for Japan.

The new goal is loftier than Japan’s original target of a 26 per cent reduction from 2013, when emissions were at their highest.

On the positive side of things, the country plans to retire the large majority of its old and inefficient plants by 2030, and restrict coal power finance overseas to countries committed to long-term decarbonisation – although the financing of any coal power plants is highly questionable given how polluting the fuel is.

It also plans to have 10GW of wind farm capacity by 2030.

The country, which is the world’s fifth biggest emissions emitter, is still rated highly insufficient by CAT however, and in line to bring about a 3C global temperature rise.

Japan is simply not cutting emissions or seeking clean alternatives fast enough to hit Paris Climate Agreement targets as things stand.

Brazil

If the Paris Climate Agreement targets are to be met, then Brazil’s involvement is crucial.

Biden clashed with President Jair Bolsonaro last year, condemning rampant logging in the Amazon and warning that “rainforests of Brazil are being torn down”.

The Brazilian leader, who was closely allied with the Trump administration, called Biden’s declaration “disastrous and unnecessary”.

Half a year on and, under huge pressure due to his disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic, Bolsonaro wrote to Biden to say he was “committed to eliminating illegal deforestation in Brazil by 2030” and asked for the U.S. president’s “personal engagement” to address the issue.

Good intentions need to be followed by good actions however, as Brazil’s ledger is markedly blotted.

During the pandemic the government has used processes meant to fast-track Covid legislation to approve controversial ownership rights for illegally deforested land, CAT reports.

Meanwhile, environmental enforcement agents have been asked to self-isolate at home.

The Amazon rainforest, which sucks up a huge amount of global carbon emissions, is being cut down at a frightening pace.

More than one million hectares of land was deforested in the Legal Amazon in 2019, a 34 per cent increase on 2018, and 120 per cent larger than the historic low reached in 2012.

Brazil has to reverse this trend quickly if it is to meet its Paris Climate Agreement pledge of no illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030.

CAT rates Brazil as insufficient and in line for a 3C global temperature increase.