US and China Need to Cooperate to Deal With Global Warming
by John Lawrence, September 9, 2020
The two largest greenhouse gas emitters are the US and China. As of 2017 China was responsible for 24.3% of the worlds GHG emissions, the US, 13.4%. The EU is third at 9.1%. These 3 countries are responsible for almost half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing will get done with respect to reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses unless there is cooperation among the major greenhouse gas emitters. As of now the US administration does not even believe in global warming. Trump is a global warming denier. So we are going backward rather than forward. That's why it is of utmost importance that Biden gets elected. Trump is trying to exacerbate tensions with China, drumming up a super competition. This is not constructive. The whole world must cooperate if there is a chance of getting global warming under control before it is too late. Right now the US is fiddling while the earth burns.
The Paris climate agreement is at risk of falling apart because the Trump administration is responsible for the fact that the US is dropping out. That means that the whole worldwide agreement will be meaningless because the US is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter per person and second largest overall. Withdrawal will take final effect on November 4, 2020, one day after the next US presidential election. To a great extent, the future of the agreement depends on the outcome of that election. This makes this a crucial election not only for the future of the US but for the future of the whole world. But a lot of damage has already been done. It was done the minute Trump announced his intent to leave the agreement and began rolling back Obama’s climate regulations. This makes twice a Democratic president signed an international climate agreement and a Republican subsequently reneged (the first was the Kyoto Protocol, signed by Clinton in 1997 but never ratified by Bush).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that, to get on a trajectory to limit the rise in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or even 2 degrees — the world’s shared targets — the global economy needs to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, hitting 50 percent less by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2050. (After that, it will need to go carbon negative.) If Trump is reelected that means that the world will never achieve 50% less GHG emissions by 2030 let alone zero emissions by 2050. A Green New Deal of some sort is absolutely necessary. What's the alternative? The free market will deal with global warming? Give me a break. It is absolutely necessary that governments of the world be fully committed to reducing GHGs and going to renewable energy at the fastest possible rate. If that's socialism, so be it. No government knows better the positive aspects of capitalism than the Chinese Communist government. They brought 800,000 people out of poverty in 40 years by converting to a capitalist economy although politically they are still an authoritarian state. So what? Cooperation with respect to global warming is more important than the exact economic arrangements that pertain in any country.
The US has not been able in recent years to develop its infrastructure even prior to any need for renewable energy. At this time infrastructure rebuilding and renewal is of paramount importance just to mitigate the effects of global warming. Case in point: California. A Green New Deal could put tens of thousands of people to work just clearing brush in vulnerable areas. This year even before fire season starts officially, more acres have been burned than in all previous history. To mitigate this threat brush needs to be cleared in a wide area, not just in "defensible areas" around peoples' houses. There are cases where home owners did clear defensible areas and their houses still burned to the ground. Other examples of mitigation are the undergrounding of utilities in areas where storms typically take out electric power. In fact they should be undergrounded all over the US. More wind and solar installations need to be built so that electric utilities are less dependent on fossil fuels, and the electric grid needs to be updated. The government needs to mandate that all new vehicles sold are electric vehicles, and that the national infrastructure for electric vehicle energizing be built.
So while the earth and all the peoples thereon are currently experiencing the effects of global warming, the pace of conversion to renewable energy is agonizingly slow. It's going to take a Green New Deal or a Green Marshall Plan or however you want to characterize it both to mitigate the effects that we are already experiencing and to convert to a world in which we are not spewing greenhouse gasses into the environment. In the process many good paying jobs can be created. They just won't be jobs created by private enterprise. Left up to private enterprise, the situation will only get worse as shown by the Trump administration's efforts to deregulate any restrictions on corporate dumping of waste products into the environment. Now is the time to come together as a world, not exacerbate tensions over relatively petty grievances, and create a habitable planet that future generations can live on in a healthy and sustainable way.
