The Biggest Rogue States of the Climate Crisis

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Jason DeCrow/AP Photo

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the Climate Action Summit in the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, September 23, 2019.

When it comes to the climate crisis, there are countries that practice green diplomacy but fail to act, and there are others that neither talk about it nor act. The latter includes some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The United States, famously, pulled out of the Paris Agreement, and has no goals for addressing the human-caused contributions to climate change. But beyond the U.S., China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are among the worst-prepared countries and the worst-behaving when it comes to the climate.

These countries still have ratified goals within the diplomatic efforts of the Paris Agreement. But their actions are nowhere near in line with the central objective to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Their lack of action is partially justified by what activist Greta Thunberg called the desire to “talk about … money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” in an impassioned speech at this year’s U.N. Climate Action Summit. China and Russia are deeply dependent on coal, Russia has a significant fossil fuel sector, and Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest fossil fuel producer. Action on climate change would mean radical changes to their economic systems that they are unwilling to make to a degree equal to the severity of the crisis.

Of these three heavyweight emitters, China represents the largest portion of global emissions from any single country, at 29 percent of the world’s total. The U.S. is the next-largest at 16 percent, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists/International Energy Agency’s report with the most recent data available from 2016.

However, China’s profile is more complex than that statistic suggests. China uses the most coal in the world but also manufactures the most solar energy technology. The People’s Republic has created millions of new jobs in green tech and anticipates adding 4.5 million more in 2020, according to Worldwatch. The Chinese government has also implemented successful regulations on emissions and an emissions trading scheme, according to the Climate Change Performance Index’s most recent report.

China’s current policies remain, despite these investments, “highly insufficient,” according to the Climate Action Tracker. If every country made goals like China’s, the Earth would warm at 3 degrees by the end of the century. By 2030, the People’s Republic will be emitting about 14.4 to 15.8 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) per year, excluding offsets from land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF), almost 70 percent of which will come from energy production.

Per the Paris Agreement, China’s goal is to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 or earlier, which could be possible according to current policy projections. However, China’s energy sector needs more serious reform than its current goal of about 20 percent non–fossil fuel energy sources in supply by 2030.

In addition to energy-related CO2 production, China also has to reform the emissions of other greenhouse gases like hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs replaced other ozone-depleting gases that used to power appliances, but they are also one of the most potent GHG. Last year, they accounted for 1.6 percent of China’s total GHG emissions.

In 2015, the Chinese government launched its ambitious “Made In China 2025” initiative to modernize ten major industrial sectors, which prioritized green manufacturing. However, the Chinese media has been banned from reporting on the initiative since the start of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Trump has targeted the initiative by name and complained that it is unfair to U.S. companies.

While China has made large investments in green energy, its production-centric economy and its comparatively low renewable-energy use have outweighed those already inadequate efforts. However, compared to Russia and Saudi Arabia, China’s climate action is heroic.

In 2018, Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry issued a 900-page report on its vulnerabilities to climate change–caused disasters that was described in The Moscow Times as painting “an apocalyptic future for the country.” But that hasn’t significantly changed policy. Russia’s current policy projections would result in more than 4 degrees warming by the end of the century, if every country set the same goals.

According to the Climate Action Report, Russia’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement is so weak it doesn’t even require the country to lessen greenhouse gas emissions from current levels, rendering it close to useless. Russia also ranks last in use of renewable energy of all the countries in the most recent report of the Climate Change Performance Index.

President Vladimir Putin supported a new “Ecology” plan after winning his fourth mandate in 2018. It doesn’t directly call for emissions reductions, but it calls for reducing air pollution levels, reforestation, and improving waste management, which could improve Russia’s climate change contributions. Russia’s Paris Agreement goal calls for 25 percent to 30 percent reduction of emissions from 1990 by 2030. Excluding Russia’s LULUCF, that is only a 13 percent to 19 percent reduction. Its pledge also allows national emissions to continue increasing up to about 22 percent by 2030, with projections showing Russia will emit between 2.8 and 3.0 GtCO2e in 2030.

Climate change is not a priority for the Russian government, despite the Environment Ministry’s report, which highlighted how the Federation is already affected by the climate crisis. There have been some modest legislative efforts proposed to combat the climate crisis. In 2018, legislation was introduced to require that companies report their emissions levels and introduce a cap-and-trade system for major carbon emitters by 2025. But it has not been made law yet. There is also a goal in the Russian NDC to draft a low-carbon strategy until 2050 by the end of this year, but the national coordination of social and economic interests to meet this goal have not been assessed and a concrete strategy has not been introduced.

Equally as negligent is the world’s largest oil producer, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 2016, Saudi Arabia released its “Vision 2030” plan to diversify its energy supply, become less oil-dependent, and invest in more solar energy. However, when it comes to its energy sector, the needs of the economy have trumped that of the environment.

The Kingdom’s Paris goals are also still ambiguous. Its NDC states its goal is to decrease emissions by up to 130 MtCO2e (megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2030, but it hasn’t given any baseline data for that to be subtracted from. The Climate Action Tracker estimates, based on emissions levels recorded in the NDC agreement and researched historical trends, that Saudi emissions will increase about 416 percent to 562 percent more than 1990 levels.

Saudi Arabia also has one of the highest levels of energy consumption per capita. This level may triple by 2030 and will subsequently increase the amount of oil needed domestically in the Kingdom, which is also subsidized by the government. In 2018, Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding with SoftBank to build a 200 GW (gigawatt) solar plant, which could produce 440,000 GWh (gigawatt hours). For reference, 1 GWh is equivalent to 1.3 million horsepower. This project would be the largest solar project of this scale and would dramatically change Saudi Arabia’s climate action profile. Historically, Saudi Arabia has set a low bar for active participation toward environmental change, but future collaborations, like the one with SoftBank, could optimistically reframe the Kingdom’s future. But we have to wait to see the results of that project.

Only two countries in the world are on track to limit warming to the 1.5 degree ceiling set in the Paris Agreement. Not a single G7 country and none of the planet’s largest emitters are on track. While green diplomacy is abundant and 175 countries signed the Paris Agreement, the accord’s lack of enforcement and the ill-advised presumption that the climate crisis has far-off consequences have masked the importance of climate change behind a thick smog. The world’s largest spenders of the carbon budget will have to prioritize the climate now or prepare the whole planet for environmental catastrophe later.