ARTHUR CHRENKOFF: When Greta goes to Guangzhou.

While China now produces more CO2 than the United States and the European Union put together, the Asia-Pacific region (which does include a few industrialised countries, like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, but is mainly in the “developing” category, with China, India and Indonesia the most prominent examples) emits nearly twice as much CO2 as the United States and the European Union combined. And rising.

This is what you always have to keep in mind whenever you hear about the great progress being made in China (and to a lesser extent in India) in embracing the renewables. It’s a case of “yes, but…” It might be true, as far as it goes, yet still India’s coal-powered electricity generation capacity is expected to increase by over 22 per cent to 2022; China itself, for whatever else it’s doing with wind and hydro, is also building hundreds of new “old” power stations as it’s creating the largest middle class in history. And while it’s true that in emissions per capita the developing world still leads the rest of the world where all the billions live, the climate only cares about the absolute numbers.

St Joan of Arc of the Children’s Crusade against Carbon, Greta Thunberg, should be going to Beijing or Bangalore and staging her protests there instead of, or at least in addition to, Sweden or New York. She should be hounding President Xi and Prime Minister Modi about their shameful emissions. She should be leading throngs of Asian kids out of schools for her Friday student strikes. She should be castigating the industries and the consumers of the developing world for destroying the planet and killing humanity in the process. She should be doing all this if she were serious about the global nature of the problem. But I won’t be holding my breath.

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