An Australian economist has argued China has “hoodwinked” the world on net zero in what he acknowledges could be seen as a “controversial” take.
Leith Van Onselen, chief economist at the MB Fund and MB Super and co-founder of MacroBusiness, told 4BC host Mike Jeffreys that while Australia and other countries are making sacrifices for the good of the planet, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter is not, and therefore “we’re basically shooting ourselves in the foot”.
“I’d argue China is the largest beneficiary of the West’s net zero policies,” Mr Van Onselen said on the radio show.
“It’s not abiding by the same rules and what we’re effectively doing is, while we’re reducing our carbon footprints through these sorts of policies and giving us expensive energy and shutting down manufacturing and becoming less diversified economies, China is simply expanding its carbon output and expanding its manufacturing sector at our expense.
“The world’s not getting cleaner. We’re just shifting the pollution away from us, to China, and it’s actually less regulated in China.”
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He referred to a Reuters report from August that found China had boosted domestic coal production and imports to record highs.
It said production from China’s mines hit a seasonal record of 390 million tonnes in July 2024, up from 378 million in the same month a year earlier, and imports surged to a seasonal record of 296 million tonnes in the first seven months from 261 million tonnes in 2023.
Mr Van Onselen concluded: “I think we can all agree we’d like to have a cleaner planet but the whole idea of net zero is completely impossible or ridiculous if China is not involved.
“If we’re going to make sacrifices, China has to make sacrifices.”
Leith is telling furphies.
Where did China import that coal from? Australia. (Not only Australia but that’s not the point)
Australia isn’t doing its part, new coal mines were approved last year and exports are at an all time high.
Australians are, per capita, some of the worst GHG emitters on the planet.
Sure, sounds great. But it’s the same problem that applies to everyone - all you can do is reduce your own impact and hope they do the same.
The article seems to be basically just complaining about China not doing enough, while not proposing any measures to encourage China to reduce their impact, while also failing to note that the manufacturing China is taking produces resources and goods FOR the west. If we don’t want to give them our manufacturing jobs, then pass legislation forcing more manufacturing to be done in your own country.
Just saying “no, we should burn fossil fuels because otherwise it’s not fair” is a bunch of bullshit.
That’s an oversimplification of the article. It’s not that “we should burn fossil fuels.” China should rather stop burning them.
China’s measures to fight climate change are highly insufficient as per practically all independent metrics, and the Chinese government doesn’t appear to be even willing to reduce its emissions. It keeps on to produce a massive amount of overcapacity to to flood the world (and especially the global south) with cheap products for geopolitical and economic gains.
That argument doesn’t make a lot of sense because China has a higher percentage of renewables in their electricity mix than Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production
China is also regularly the country with the most renewable energy expansion and is subsidising and developing a lot of the technologies needed to transition to renewables.
Australia is building out renwables extremely quickly. Fast enough to have overtaken China in share of low carbon electricity in 2023. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart®ion=Europe&country=CHN~AUS
Yeah, the European Union is also good. For the first time in 2024, solar energy in the EU surpassed coal in generating electricity across all 27 EU member states, while natural gas production of electricity fell for the fifth year running.
In the European Union (EU), 47% of electricity now comes from renewable sources like wind and solar, a new record according to a report from the think tank Ember. This is a far higher percentage than in other countries, including the United States and China, where about two-thirds of energy comes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas.
As I said, tthe narrative that China as leading the path to a better climate is simply wrong. China’s track record regarding the fight against climate change is -very much as those of most other larger countries- an absolute disaster: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china
The solution for that problem are carbon tariffs. As in every product imported has to pay X money for every ton of carbon they emitted producing the product.
Also obviously China has to go to zero. Everybody has to and that is why pretty much everybody has signed the Paris Climate Agreement promising to go to zero.
