In the run-up to the climate conference in Glasgow, there are suggestions that without real participation and greater contribution from China, neither the conference nor the global response to climate change will get anywhere. The unstated worry is this: will China honour its pledges to reduce emissions? This anxiety is unnecessary. Anyone who knows China well is sure that my country is serious about reducing carbon emissions and pursuing green development, and that we mean what we say. In China, it is already a national consensus that “lucid waters and…
Tag: Climate crisis
‘Ecological civilisation’: an empty slogan or will China act on the environment?
This week, China took charge of hosting a major UN environmental conference for the first time, at the opening of Cop15 in Kunming. The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter and largest consumer of natural resources might seem a strange choice to host talks to stop the destruction of ecosystems and mass extinctions of wildlife, but the conference marks a tipping point in China’s development and an international debut for “ecological civilisation”, a little-known phrase outside its borders with big implications for the planet. Amid uncertainty around whether President Xi Jinping…