Stopping China and decarbonization: what kind of sense does that make?

During her visit to China last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that her country is considering imposing heavy tariffs on imported Chinese products such as EVs, solar panels and lithium batteries, arguing: “China is simply too big for the rest of the world to absorb this enormous capacity.” She added: “When the global market is flooded with artificially cheap Chinese products, the viability of American and foreign companies is called into question.”

It’s worth pointing out that Yellen hasn’t brought up the issue of China’s contribution to global warming, although China is, by far, the absolute leader in carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. That said, the problems we are experiencing are due, fundamentally, to the actions over the last 150 years of the United States and Europe, which have brought us to where we are and enabled them to dominate the world.

Now it is the turn of China — and India to a lesser extent — to pursue a development strategy that involves increasing their emissions until they reach their maximum around 2030, in the case of the former, or even beyond in the case of the latter, with all that this entails for the climate emergency. And of course, when warnings to stop their development come precisely from those largely responsible for the mess we’re in, the…