Don’t get too excited, they aren’t planning on doing so until ………….2060!
President Xi Jinping has made a shock announcement to the UN general assembly that China will aim for carbon neutrality by 2060. Although it’s a step in the right direction it isn’t very ambitious and they aren’t winding down the old emissions just yet. With President Jinping saying the will hit peak emissions before 2030! I repeat that’s peak emissions by 2030!
China is the worlds biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, being responsible for a whopping 28% of the worlds carbon output. Even though the rest of the world is moving away from fossil fuels, emissions continued to rise in 2018 and 2019.
Many believe this was a political play by President Jinping by taking advantage of the US being in denial of climate change.
“Xi Jinping’s climate pledge at the UN, minutes after President Donald Trump’s speech, is clearly a bold and well calculated move”
Li Shuo, Greenpeace Asia
In President Jinping’s announcement he said
“Covid-19 reminds us that humankind should launch a green revolution and move faster to create a green way of development and life, preserve the environment and make Mother Earth a better place for all. Humankind can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature and go down the beaten path of extracting resources without investing in conservation, pursuing development at the expense of protection, and exploiting resources without restoration,”
The Europe Union with similar thoughts, pledged last week to reduce it’s emissions by 55% by 2030 in the post covid era. These new commitments are giving a wink wink, nudge nudge to other nations ahead of next years UN Climate Summit where it will be expected greater commitments to be put forward to further push for us to keep the earths temperature below 1.5 degrees.
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