Nope, simply correcting incorrect claims about China, according to the information available. A policy argument about whether China should be getting foreign aid from us or anyone else is a different discussion. China's human rights violations is also another discussion. But it's wrong to say that China is not doing anything about climate change when they are actually doing the exact thing they said they would do about climate change, namely, to peak emissions by 2030 according to the Paris Agreement and, more recently announced, to be carbon neutral by 2060. If and when they don't meet those two targets, THEN you can get upset about them not doing their part.
Building newer, more efficient coal plants and closing older, less efficient coal plants is part of and has been part of their plan to ultimately reduce emissions. So, that's whey they're apparently doing. Incidentally, all of China's
100 most efficient coal plants are more efficient than our
MOST efficient one. Getting higher percentage of power from renewables is also a part of their plan. Their target was 20% by 2030. They're currently just under 30%, so they're ahead of pace.
Folks keep saying "they're bulding more coal plants so clearly they don't care about climate change." While the data point is true, the conclusion is not warranted because there's a bigger picture. Similarly, if I were to say "they're building more wind and solar plants so clearly they care about climate change" as the only evidence, that's not enough. They could be just doing it as a token gesture, without really, making much of an impact on their overall power generation. But, as it turns out, not only are they building more, they
doubled their renewable capacity in 2020.
A lot of the argument supposedly proving China's not doing their part seems to rely on the fact that the Chinese government is untrustworthy (I agree, it is) and must then be lying to us. The supposed evidence for this particular lie is that they keep building coal plants. But, if they were lying, why in the hell would they tell us they're building coal plants? If their government is THAT bad at lying, I don't think we have anything to worry about. All of this ignores that much of the information we have doesn't actually come from the Chinese government but from independent observers who went there to see what they were doing, such as the group of
energy experts that visited in 2016. Others have said they say one thing and do something else, which I've demonstrated to be false, at least so far. We can check back in after 2030.
