China's CO2 Emissions Have Been Flat Or Falling For Past 18 Months, Analysis Finds 179
China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, "adding evidence to the hope that the world's biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule," reports the Guardian. From the report: Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation -- which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year -- meant the country's energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased. China added 240GW of solar capacity in the first nine months of this year, and 61GW of wind, putting it on track for another renewable record in 2025. Last year, the country installed 333GW of solar power, more than the rest of the world combined. [...]
The analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), for the science and climate policy website Carbon Brief, found China's CO2 emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, thanks in part to declining emissions in the travel, cement and steel industries. But China has a record of underpromising and overdelivering on climate targets. Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a US-based thinktank, said in a recent note that the latest Chinese climate targets should be seen as a baseline and not a ceiling.
The analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), for the science and climate policy website Carbon Brief, found China's CO2 emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, thanks in part to declining emissions in the travel, cement and steel industries. But China has a record of underpromising and overdelivering on climate targets. Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a US-based thinktank, said in a recent note that the latest Chinese climate targets should be seen as a baseline and not a ceiling.
the world should reward them (Score:3, Interesting)
China should be rewarded for this. I am tired if this anti china war mongering, china is the future.
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I am tired if this anti china war mongering,
Where are you seeing anti-china war mongering? I haven't seen it.
Re: the world should reward them (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: the world should reward them (Score:4, Informative)
America is authoritarian in that your federal bureaucracy has been purged of non MAGA leadership, your capital turned into an armed camp, the DOJ prosecutes political opponents and personal enemies of The Leader, The President is acting without legal authority in taxation and defense, a terror force has been activated to disappear "undesirables", and the entirety of the military leadership has been informed that the new prime target is American citizens opposed to MAGA.
Re: the world should reward them (Score:4)
Re: the world should reward them (Score:2)
China has a form of democracy, so sure.
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So does Iran and so did the USSR. Or at least they had elections. The problem is that allowing the people to choose between a carefully curated list of party suits isn't the same as democracy, at best it shifts the focus to different points of the party program.
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Is it that different to what some Western countries have? The US is a two party system. The UK is too, despite recent gains by smaller parties.
Speaking for the UK, the choice is between hard and soft Thatcherism. That's not much of a choice. A vote for anyone else is usually wasted, not counted at the national level.
That is deliberate policy too. No government will change it because they think they can win the next election and gain 100% of the power, rather than a more representative system that distribute
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The US is a two party system.
I know what you mean, but strictly speaking, it's not a "system." There are two dominant political parties in the USA, but that is due to the US polity, not by fiat (constitutional or otherwise.)
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The US is a two party system.
I know what you mean, but strictly speaking, it's not a "system."
It is the net result of Duverger's law [rochester.edu], which is a consequence of the voting system where the plurality takes all; which tends to suppress third parties.
If you want to see more than a binary choice, advocate for a system that does not squeeze out third parties. My choice would approval voting [electionscience.org], a system which has the advantage of not needing any change whatsoever in the existing voting process, only requiring removing the current constraint that if a person votes for more than one candidate, their vote is di
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Thanks for the reply. I'd point out that other countries with plurality-elections have managed to acquire more than two dominant (well, prominent) political parties. See Canada, for example.
As for alternatives to plurality, approval voting might be better. Instant-runoff ranking might be even better still, but would require some changes to existing voting processes, and education of the electorate.
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org] shows that no voting method can be perfectly fair in all situations. However, I r
Approval voting or Run-off voting. (Score:2)
Thanks for the reply. I'd point out that other countries with plurality-elections have managed to acquire more than two dominant (well, prominent) political parties. See Canada, for example.
Canada is a parliamentary system. Turns out to behave differently.
As for alternatives to plurality, approval voting might be better. Instant-runoff ranking might be even better still, but would require some changes to existing voting processes, and education of the electorate. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org] shows that no voting method can be perfectly fair in all situations. However, I recall that runoffs are the best compromise.
Arrow's theorem doesn't actually cover approval voting, since it doesn't quite fit the requirements (short answer, Arrow's theorem has a built-in assumption that the choice function is deterministic based on individual voters' ordered preferences, while approval voting adds an additional voter preference that is not deterministic, the cut-off between "like" and "dislike". You can model this as an additional parameter, but all the ways I know
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I wouldn't be so certain that China's model won't come to dominate eventually, because we don't seem to be able to fix our democracies. There are clear flaws that are being exploited now, and the inability to adequately deal with climate change while China races ahead is both a moral and economic failure.
I'd very much prefer democracy to be the winning model, but it won't just happen by itself. Look at the rise of populist right wingers - people will vote away their rights and prosperity in exchange for not
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Where are the right wing populists taking away rights for security?
Out in the streets of American cities rounding up "gang members" or "narco terrorists" to deport/detain without due process?
Re: the world should reward them (Score:2)
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There's a reason OP put "gang members" and "narco terrorists" in quotes. You can't remove the quotes around those without due process. So you either spend the time to determine if the person you're deporting fits those categories, or you deport them as "alleged gang members or narco terrorists". And if you're fine applying justice without due process to some group of people just because you THINK (or, more likel
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You confuse standing for gangs and drug dealers with standing for their rights to due process. Rights that you and I enjoy also.
Threaten one group's rights and you threaten your own.
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If only they didn't keep sending away people who weren't gang members based on false accusations and thinly veiled racism.
Re: the world should reward them (Score:2)
Democracy is dead anywhere people aren't willing to put in the work to keep it. We all can think of one glaring example right now.
Yet CO2 levels have gone up... (Score:3, Insightful)
... by the greatest leap in a year ever recorded last year - 3ppm.
I get the feeling that positive feedback mechanisms are starting to kick in and soon anything we do re human emissions will become irrelevant.
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At least China has now proven that not only can an economy thrive with renewable energy (remember all the hand wringing about the lights going out and destroying manufacturing?), but it can in fact be a hugely lucrative market.
The other big emitters should be looking at China with envy, and seeking to catch up before they are left behind with only expensive fossil and nuclear power.
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Well, it all depends on how you define "thrive", eh? China has mastered creative accounting like few others.
Re: Yet CO2 levels have gone up... (Score:2)
Bollocks.
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People toss out a throwaway allegation and then expect you write a dissertation to rebut it.
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This is due to natural systems not being able to absorb as much of human emissions as they did in the past. For the sake of argument, if we stopped all emissions today, then CO2 levels will still fall, just not as fast as if we stopped all emissions 10 years ago. We're not into "positive feedback" of CO2 levels, we are just into reduced "negative feedback".
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I hope you're right.
Extrapolation (Score:5, Informative)
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And then, you are projecting linear growth for Solar and Wind, but the actual growth rates are exponential. Roughly every three years, the amount of Solar and Wind installed is doubling - doing so for the last 15 years. In 2027, the World will install 1400 GWp, in 2030, it will b
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I completely lose all respect for anyone who looks at a section of a curve and extrapolates that trend onto the next twenty years as if nothing could possibly ever happen in that timeframe to change that.
I mean just look at that statement: Taking your 25% estimate we will install as much Solar in 2045 year as the total fossil energy output today.
Which assumes that in 2045 we have the production capacity, installation manpower and space to do so.
But you start out in a pretty shortsighted way alread: Sure, bu
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And no, I don't require every city to plaster its roofs with Solar. I just want to point out how much people underestimate the
Re:Extrapolation (Score:5, Interesting)
If you had to choose between the schoolboy error of assuming growth continues to increase exponentially till 2045 and the schoolboy error of assuming that exponential growth immediately flattens out this year, the former looks a shit load more plausible than the latter, as demonstrated by the past 20 years of projections from the IEA in this famous chart from Auke Hoekstra. There may be a topping out and an S-curve, but there’s no signs of it in the data.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/20... [pv-magazine.com]
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Obviously exponential growth won't go on forever, but we are a very, very, very long way from saturating the available demand or land available for renewables.
Deployment will keep accelerating as costs continue to fall and people see the benefits of producing their own energy. The payback time on the investment has been steadily falling for decades.
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But the growth is exponential. It is far from its peak this year.
The pace is likely to keep increasing and deployment gets easier, turbines get bigger, and costs continue to fall. Solar PV is so cheap it's being used as fence panelling.
Re:Extrapolation (Score:4, Informative)
The world consumes 23000 GW, of which about 70% (16000 GW) is from fossil fuels. At the current pace, it would then take 64 years to replace all fossil fuels with renewables
Don't fall for the primary energy fallacy [cleantechnica.com] - the notion that every GWh of energy provided by fossil fuels must be replaced 1:1 with renewables. A huge portion of that fossil-fueled energy is lost - wasted - due to Carnot efficiency. Another chunk is lost because most fossil-fueled equipment is old and inefficient. An electrified economy will a whole lot more electricity (duh), but less total energy overall. Plus, it'll be run using newer and more efficient equipment.
The best illustration comes from cars: only 1/3 - 1/4 of the energy in the (fossil fuel) actually makes it to the wheels; the rest goes out the tailpipe. A lot of that kinetic energy is later lost to heat in the brakes. And that's after all the energy needed to extract and refine the fossil fuels in the first place. An EV side-steps a lot of that waste, especially when its fueled with renewables.
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This is one part of why in the future, we will potentially be facing a world of energy abundance. We are likely to overbuild capacity by some margin compared to current usage. It’s an exciting future, although it’s some way off.
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This is one part of why in the future, we will potentially be facing a world of energy abundance. We are likely to overbuild capacity by some margin compared to current usage. It’s an exciting future, although it’s some way off.
At the rate AI and cryptocurrencies are consuming energy, I think the day that happens is some way off indeed.
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The world consumes 23000 GW [ourworldindata.org], of which about 70% (16000 GW) is from fossil fuels. At the current pace, it would then take 64 years to replace all fossil fuels with renewables.
Doesn't take into account improvements in efficiency. UK energy use for example peaked in 2005 and has been dropping ever since despite over that 20 year period the population increasing by over 13% from 60 million to 68 million.
China's solar PV roll-out forecast to slow (Score:2)
Unfortunately China's solar PV roll-out is is forecast to dramatically slow (and is already doing-so) due to elimination of a guaranteed buy-price for solar PV electricity on the Chinese grid about 6 months ago. Fortunately the PV already installed will keep generating for 20+ years, so that's not all bad, and PV module prices have already fallen on the world market as a result. PV+Battery combos will hopefully ramp up in the next few years in response to the policy change. Also hopefully China's massive
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China added 240GW of solar capacity in the first nine months of this year
therefore the forecast is 240*12/9 = 320GW for the year, which is less than last year:
Last year, the country installed 333GW of solar power
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“hopefully China's massive PV manufacturing capacity will start flowing to the developing world”
You are so out of date, it’s not even funny. The developing world has been dramatically increasing its solar growth for the past five years. Here’s an article about Pakistan:
https://www.wri.org/insights/p... [wri.org]
Same is happening right across Africa
Gee, if only there were another big country ... (Score:2)
... with ginormous sun-rich empty spaces of mainland that we could solarize at record speed - as China is doing right now with results as shown - in order to get this fossil-fuel eco-turnaround happening ASAP. Wouldn't that be nice, no?
Check their data sources (Score:3, Interesting)
This "analysis" is based entirely on CCP statistics, not an independent studfy. They used the following data sources for this report:
National Bureau of Statistics of China
National Energy Administration of China
China Electricity Council
China Customs official data releases
and Sinopec, Chinaâ(TM)s largest oil refiner.
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Well, yes, because it’s a report about China, so it uses Chinese data sources. Sure, they *could* be lying about it all, but it’s extremely obvious that China has built out a huge solar panel, wind turbine, battery storage and EV manufacturing capability, because not only is it deploying it internally, it’s also exporting in large volumes. So the world in which they are lying is one in which they’ve done these things but these things have weirdly had no effect on transportation emiss
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It would make more sense to me if they had monitoring capabilities outside of China. China is not known for their reliable self reporting.
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If they were cheating by any significant amount, we would know because emissions are visible from space. This article has an image showing how emissions can be traced to individual sources, even: https://theconversation.com/tr... [theconversation.com]
Satellites can also see reduced smog over China.
We can also see the massive solar and wind installations from space, or you can just get a visa and go look at them for yourself. Plenty of people have. Take a PM2.5 and CO2 monitor with you, for good measure.
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And yet the results of the analysis align nicely with the amount of green energy they have brought online. It also is an analysis of all CCP statistics, the same statistics that had no problem pointing out emissions were rising in the past.
I don't know what your point is. Do you have any real criticism other than an ad hominem attack?
Recession? (Score:3, Informative)
Historically, falling emissions meant that a country is in a recession.
I don't believe things have changed that much.
> thanks in part to declining emissions in the travel, cement and steel industries.
That's a recession...
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No a recession is a decline in the economy. You can cut one industry without going into a recession in a country. But yeah China has in part produced less steel and cement. Now do you want to discuss the everloving fuckton of solar, wind, and storage they are building out along with the fact that there are nearly 40million EVs on Chinese roads compared to close to zero in 2014?
But yes one must focus on cement and steel and ignore the words "in part"
THIS IS UNPOSSIBLE! (Score:2)
How is reliable the data? (Score:2)
How reliable is this data? China is also known for embellishing official data, not only for the international community but also for its own government.
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Because manufacturing has been flat too (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because China's industrial production has been flat to declining for 18 months.
https://ycharts.com/indicators... [ycharts.com]
China is the future. (Score:2)
U.S. been falling for years (Score:2)
U.S. has been falling for several years. And we never ratified Kyoto.
What about their GHG total? (Score:2)
in the short / near term so of those emissions matter as much or more than CO2
Re:One of the few advantages of a repressive regim (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One of the few advantages of a repressive regim (Score:4, Informative)
Cool, so expect the same results to be coming in from America soon?
Yes.
But the opposite direction as America goes all in on coal [whitehouse.gov]
Re:One of the few advantages of a repressive regim (Score:5, Informative)
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Which is to be commended, but also... The US started from one of the worst positions too. The the absolute worst, but certainly the worst of all the major economies.
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And 10 of those past 15 years were under Democratic administrations that actually cared about environmental concerns.
5 of those years have been Trump doing as much damage as possible. Imagine where we might be without a 2/3rds effort.
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'Per the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy, over the past 15 years, the U.S. has experienced the largest decline in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of any country.
There's lies, damn lies, and statistics. This one falls in the latter. The USA has a wonderful combination of a horrendous starting point, and a large population to distribute the problem across.
Absolute:
They've gone from 5.25bn to 4.62bn tonnes. Kudos. But let's compare them with say a comparable chunk of the western emitters: Europe went from 4.22bn to 3.52bn, bugger they loose to western peers on a similar scale. It's easy to claim wins in absolute emission reduction when you're such a big emitter. But w
Re: One of the few advantages of a repressive regi (Score:2)
Bernie is not authoritarian.
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Well, you see: the word "socialism" is bad, but the concept is just fine.
See: the Trump Administration seizing the means of production in the tech industry by having the government take a stake in Intel, Nvidia, AMD, etc. while also saying that the medical insurance companies are evil parasites all of a sudden while simultaneously shitting on anyone that dares to talk about a single-payer health care system.
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the Trump Administration seizing the means of production
Well, that's communism, not socialism.
Re:Confusing (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but your word salad makes no sense. The one part is "Trump is stealing", and leave off the rest. He's playing the leveraged buyout and stripping game, and going after his enemies (that is, anyone that doesn't kiss his ass).
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Re: Confusing (Score:2)
I suspect that cancelling private jet flights had a strong impact on getting things moving, pun intended.
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One just has to accept the Leech of China, a.k.a. the CCP. And you have to accept their boneheaded economic decisions like creating a housing bubble that crashed. The CCP officials are corrupt in a pay-to-play system.
Come to think of it, this latter is also true now of the U.S. I guess for all el Bunko's whining about China, he and his rich friends, now cabinet secretaries, were actually taking notes.
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Projections by industry group the China Electricity Council showing that 80GW of coal could be commissioned for the full year would make 2025 the biggest year for new coal power capacity additions in a decade, the CREA report said.
New approvals of coal power projects in the first half of the year, however, fell slightly from recent years, to 25GW.
"The core tension of 2025 is increasingly evident: coal's share in power generation has fallen to record lows, yet new coal power capacity additions are on track to reach decade highs," the researchers wrote.
Re: One of the few advantages of a repressive regi (Score:2)
advantage.
the truth is out there
Re: One of the few advantages of a repressive reg (Score:2, Insightful)
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Pretty sure the Uyghur Muslims don't see it that way
I'm quite sure that American Muslims aren't overly happy about how they're being treated and demonised in America either.
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Hello Chinese government representative. Thank you for our daily dose of propaganda.
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People seem not to know that a lot of terrorism (actually blowing up buildings, committing murder etc.) is being done by some of the Uyghur people, to which the chinese government has acted. It isn't about wanting to purge Uyghurs and their moslim believe, it's about containing terrorists
Punishing a group because of the behavior of some individuals is generally understood to be "racist" or a "human rights violation". We generally try to avoid those things in polite society.
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Punishing a group because of the behavior of some individuals is generally understood to be "racist" or a "human rights violation". We generally try to avoid those things in polite society.
And yet that seems to the SOP for multiple branched of the US govt under Trump in the USA at the moment.
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You used a whole lot of words to still be describing collective punishment, which is still a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention.
But do go on about why that's perfectly fine in the circumstance of a brutally oppressive authoritarian regime and how the "western media" got it all wrong.
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Re: One of the few advantages of a repressive reg (Score:2)
It is fairly obvious what's going on, because nowadays you can just buy satellite pictures for a few hundred dollars.
And that is not counting the verified reports of hundreds of women raped in the camps, or the pleasant little habit of installing party members and soldiers in the houses of Uyghurs in jail to look after their kids - including teenage daughters.
It is ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. The Han Chinese are truly despicable.
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Projections show their population still growing for another 15 years (from 1.43 to 1.46 billion), and then need another 15 years to decline back to the same value. These changes are not large nor fast and we wouldn't call them a collapse at this point. https://chinaeconomicindicator... [chinaecono...icator.com]
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As for the economy, the article and even the summary says clearly:
emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, thanks in part to declining emissions in the travel, cement and steel industries.
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CO2 doesn't cause smog. Just because CO2 emissions are down doesn't mean other emissions such as particulates and nitrogen oxides aren't getting worse at the same time.
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Maybe think about what causes the excess CO2 and what correlates with it.
Re: Hmmmmmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Air pollution has improved significantly, too.
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As has urban noise. There’s endless videos of the uncannily quiet streets, and it’s clear how much more peaceful life is.
Here’s an example
https://youtube.com/shorts/BfT... [youtube.com]
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the co2 emissions continue to be emitted the SMOG proves that.
CO2 and smog are not related to each other. That much is evident at home where places like LA have *increased* CO2 emissions while eliminated the thick smog that used to blanket the city.
By the way China's air pollution in urban centres peaked back in 2006 but stayed steady for a few years after that while their CO2 emissions skyrocketted. However along with their greening ambitions they launched in a decade ago they also launched a clean air policy, and all pollution metrics have nearly halved in the past
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That is a completely mad interpretation of what that report says. You use the words fudged, underreported and straight up BS, and there’s nothing in that report that suggests a deliberate systemic policy choice by either the national or subnational governments to do any of those things. It’s a technical report that points out some of the technical challenges of collating accurate emissions data.
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The very first paragraph (or VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH) of that reports reads as follows:
“ China’s transport CO2 emissions accounted for 11% of the world’s transport greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, following only the United States (21%), according to data from Climate Watch. And these numbers have been growing rapidly: The average annual growth rate of China’s transport CO2 emissions 2012- 2019 was 4%, the second-fastest growth rate among the 10 countries producing the most transport emis