Dear readers,
China's leaders usually miss an opportunity to present themselves as a global leader.
Economic development in poorer countries, the global supply of corona vaccines and security policy - China likes to show that it is playing in the concert of the big ones.
Also in combating the climate crisis: In September, Xi Jinping promised that his country would not emit any more greenhouse gases by 2060.
The news came as a real surprise and was greeted accordingly on the world stage, especially since America was still ruled by Paris-dropout Donald Trump at the time.
China suddenly hurried away from the US on climate protection, it seemed.
It is now evident that the euphoria was premature.
On Friday, China presented its new five-year plan for developing the national economy through 2025.
Anyone who expected Beijing to match its full-bodied promises with appropriate political measures for the coming years was disappointed.
There is no upper limit for CO2 emissions in the plans, nor is there an obligation to limit CO2 emissions in the foreseeable future or even a roadmap on how climate neutrality could be achieved by 2060.
Instead, essential climate protection measures are set in relation to economic development.
According to this, CO2 emissions should fall between 13.5 and 18 percent in the period 2021 to 2025 - but in relation to the development of the gross domestic product.
That does not mean climate protection per se, but only the reduction of the »carbon intensity«.
Translated: Every additional percent of economic growth is associated with fewer greenhouse gases than before - but they will increase anyway.
China had often dealt with carbon intensity before when it came to concrete climate protection and now does not even prescribe greater efforts than in previous years.
Between 2015 and 2018, the value fell by an average of 18.8 percent.
"China knows: the climate crisis is real"
"The five-year plan is a disappointing result for the international climate community," commented climate expert Swithin Lui from Climate Action Tracker and the Berlin-based New Climate Institute to SPIEGEL.
"There is no progress on the carbon intensity of growth from the previous plan."
The massive extraction of coal, oil and gas is not compatible with the world climate agreement and confirms China's intention to continue to grow vigorously until 2030.
Zhang Shuwei, chief economist at the Draworld Environment Research Center, says: “The fourteenth five-year plan should have strong climate policy ambitions.
However, the submitted draft plan does not seem to meet expectations.
The international community assumed that China's climate policy was taking a leap, but in reality it is still crawling. "
Analyzes assume that China's emissions will peak by 2025 at the latest and then have to fall quickly if the world wants to have a chance to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.
It is more than unclear whether this will work with these plans.
With currently around ten billion tons of CO₂, the country is responsible for around a quarter of global emissions.
So were China's climate protection pledge in the summer just a PR stunt?
Nils Grünberg from the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) contradicts this in an interview with “Zeit Online”: “The requirements of the central government are definitely taken seriously in China.
China knows: the climate crisis is real. ”However, ambitious short-term climate protection often collides with the equally important goals of economic development.
Growing green and not based on fossil fuels »is not so easy in the short term.
China's economy has been developing for decades with the help of heavy industry.
In addition to coal-fired power plants, steel and cement plants cause most of the greenhouse gases - everything that supplies energy and with which infrastructure can be built, ”says Grünberg.
At least it is not unlikely that China will sharpen it in the coming months.
Sector targets for industry, energy, transport and the like will follow later in the year.
In addition, according to the Paris Agreement, the country is obliged to submit new climate protection plans soon.
The UN has made it clear that it expects new interim targets from all major states before the climate conference in Glasgow in November - and China is undoubtedly one of them.
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Beijing last October: "The five-year plan is a disappointing result for the international climate community"
Photo: Jiang Qiming / China News Service / Getty Images
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Published
Danger to coastal cities
When large cities are threatened by global sea level rise, this often has only partially to do with the melting of the glaciers.
Not only does climate change threaten coastal areas, but also subsurface subsoil.
Climate scientists have now compared the development of the so-called relative sea level rise with the respective population density.
They were able to determine that although less than one percent of the coasts are affected by a relative increase of more than 10 millimeters per year, up to 171 million people live there.
Because the fertile and easily accessible river deltas offer ideal conditions for cities such as New Orleans, Alexandria, Calcutta or Hanoi.
However, this often results in increased ground subsidence, for example due to excessive groundwater extraction or a lack of sediment replenishment due to regular flooding.
According to the researchers, in order to minimize the effects of sea rise on coastal cities as well as possible, it is essential to both reduce local causes in the medium term and combat global warming, which is more significant in the long term.
"A global analysis of subsidence, relative sea-level change and coastal flood exposure"
Nicholls et al., 2021 Nature Climate Change
Stay confident
Your Kurt Stukenberg