President Barack Obama has announced more regulation in the name of climate, requiring a 32 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Economic conservatives and those who believe in separation of powers are opposed. Given the role China has played in climate debates in the past, it is worth noting that the country should not be important to American policy now.
Some liberals simultaneously believe that more government regulation is welcome and needed, and that America faces a mysterious new normal of slow growth. There is little mystery – restricting choices available to and raising costs for small and large businesses mean less growth, including less wage growth.
The administration often justifies executive action by claiming congressional paralysis. But the most sweeping climate plan of Obama’s tenure to date was ignored by a Democratic Senate in 2009-10. Six years and three congressional elections later, the President has still less support for his approach and is simply attempting to circumvent the clear will of Congress.
Those are two problems with the President’s latest pronouncement, but Chinese behavior is probably not a third. Nor is it a justification for Obama’s step.
In 2009, President Obama went to Copenhagen with grand ambitions and was brushed off by the Chinese. Outside of the administration, this was easy to predict, as the PRC’s carbon emissions were soaring at the time.
The present situation is completely different. Chinese economic growth has at best slowed considerably and at worst disappeared entirely. The result: it is possible that emissions have already stopped growing and they could certainly stop growing before the end of this decade.
Caution is in order. No emissions growth still leaves China as the biggest emitter in the world by far, at essentially double the US level.
Chart showing carbon dioxide emissions trends for the world’s top five emitters – China, U.S., India, Russia and Japan. Reuters, W. Foo.
Measuring changes will be, at least, tricky. China has established patterns both of not reporting industrial activity and of purposefully misleading official figures. Accurately tallying emissions in such a huge country is difficult, and impossible if Beijing chooses to manipulate the data.
Emissions can rise sharply again, due to state stimulus. It has happened more than once. But arguing against a repeat of past industrial excess are a massive Chinese debt and an apparently shrinking labor force. These are conditions for stagnation — no matter what is reported — which point to flat emissions.
In particular, China’s economic weakening to date has already permitted a check on once fast-rising coal use. The US has made a small contribution to this reduction, not through regulating American energy or endless diplomatic theatrics but quite the opposite – through open markets.
American private sector innovation in gas and the freedom to export has yielded a quintupling of American liquefied petroleum exports to China in the first half of the year, to 1.28 million tons. The US is now China’s second-largest supplier after the UAE.
This is an American action that matters (a bit) to China – offering more ways to reduce coal use if it so chooses. Moral hectoring failed miserably on this score in 2009 and vague, non-binding agreements focusing on 2030 are not what did the trick in 2014. Both results stemmed from Chinese economic performance.
For its own reasons, China is no longer burning carbon as fast it can and is unlikely to resume doing so. President Obama’s climate proposal should be judged on its own lack of merit.
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