OPINION | 'China first' is a bad climate argument

I'll admit, I'm concernedand I have found myself entering many digital donnybrookson the subject over the years.

I've noticed an evolution in the online arguments against climate action in the past couple of years.Notlong ago the predominant argument seemed to be, "it isn't even happening," but as the evidence has mounted to a point past ignoring, the messaging has turned to things like "CO2 is great for plants!" and,"b-b-but what's the point of reducing carbon emissions in Canada when China generates so much???"

That last point seems really attractive. China is the most populous country in the world (1.41 billion,according to trusty Wikipedia) and the largest carbon emitter since 2006, much of it due to coal-firedpower generation. Canada's carbon output pales in comparison, so it's an easy question to ask: if a bigemitter like China isn't dealing with its emissions, then what good does it do for a small emitter likeCanada to reduce its output?

The premise of the question is faulty. For one thing, China actually is dealing with itscarbon emissions. The Chinese government has made a commitment not just to the world by signing the Paris climateagreement, but to its own people. Chinese cities have been beset by heavy smog for decades and thegovernment has promisedpeople relief from this hazard.

[It's] the moral equivalent of hiding under the covers and saying 'wake me when it's over.

China has also repeatedly recognized thethreat of climate change and acknowledged the role of CO2 emissions and hascommitted to reductiontargets. China is pursuing non-carbon energy in an entire portfolio that includes renewables like solarand wind, and an ambitious nuclear program.

Even many of China'sinfamous coal-fired power plants are now being converted to burn cleaner natural gas.

Is it working? In the past several years China's energy demand has grown by 4 per centannually, but itscarbon emissions only grew by 0.9 per centin 2017, after "three years of low or zero growth" (according to theEuropean Union's 2018 report, "Fossil CO2emissions of all world countries").

Ideally, those emissions wouldn't havegrown at all, but the gap between the growth of energy consumption and the growth of emissions is good evidence that the Chinese are reducing their overall carbon intensity and are on track to meet their targets.

Canada's emissions double China's

The evidence suggests not only that the Chinese take the threat of climate change seriously, they arealso dealing with it effectively. In the process, they're becoming the dominant supplier of renewableenergy technology to the rest of the world.

Even so, Canadawith its much smaller populationdoes emit considerably less carbon. It's worth pointingout, though, that according to that EU report, our per capita carbon emissions are double that of China's.In that regard, we may have more opportunity for reduction. And even though Canada has only 0.5 per centofthe world's population, we produce 1.6 per centof its carbon emissions. I see a moral obligation to addresscarbon emissions just in that pair of numbers alone.

Carbon emissions and climate change are emerging as major issues as we prepare to vote this fall andit's crucial that we pay attention to the facts behind emotional arguments.

If Canada's emissions are too "trivial" to make the effort worthwhile, does that mean every country that emits less can use the sameargument to put off carbon mitigation as well?

Claiming that Canada doesn't need to address carbonemissions until China does strikes me as the moral equivalent of hiding under the covers and saying "wake me when it's over."

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