Right, Wall Street Journal, John Kerry Did Fail to Persuade China to Give Up Reliable Energy
H. Sterling Burnett
January 19, 2024
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran an article noting that despite John Kerry’s failure as President Joe Biden’s climate envoy to get China to curb its coal use in order to save the world from climate change, Kerry is now being brought over to Biden’s reelection campaign. If Kerry does as good a job with Biden’s campaign as he did in changing the course of the world’s fossil fuel use, Biden’s reelection efforts are in trouble. The WSJ is right, Kerry failed in his biggest mission as the U.S. climate czar, curbing greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries, especially China.
Describing Kerry’s lack of success, the WSJ wrote:
For three years Mr. Kerry has been preoccupied with getting China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. But excluding emissions from land use and forestry, China’s emissions rose 13% between 2015 and 2023, according to Climate Action Tracker estimates. U.S. emissions fell by some 9% over the same period.
You can’t say Mr. Kerry hasn’t tried to persuade China, including the use of green flattery. “China has produced more renewable energy, more solar and wind than any other country,” he said last year.
But China’s CO2 emissions have still soared as demand for electricity surged. In 2022 China accounted for 53% of the world’s coal generation, the Ember think tank says, and new permits for coal power plants in 2022 reached “the highest level since 2015.” That’s the year Beijing signed the Paris climate accord Mr. Kerry negotiated, promising to reduce its emissions starting in 2030.
https://climaterealism.com/2024/01/right-wall-street-journal-john-kerry-did-fail-to-persuade-china-to-give-up-reliable-energy/
