News that China burns 17 percent more coal than originally believed calls into question whether the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter will work with the United States on climate change, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday.
McConnell was a critic of the climate change deal worked out between the United States and China in 2014 and has been a vocal critic of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. After the New York Times reported Wednesday that China uses 17 percent more coal than thought, McConnell said it showed where China’s priorities really lie.
“The news that China’s government is already backing away from its commitment, before the Paris talks even begin, should come as no surprise,” he said.
“What should surprise us is the fact that even in the face of all this, the Obama administration continues to plow ahead with a unilateral plan that won’t really affect the global climate but will threaten to ship American jobs overseas and increase home heating bills for middle-class families — all while China and others act solely in their own economic self interest.”
China and the United States agreed to work closer together multiple times over the past year, the most recent instance coming with the unprecedented pairing of American and Chinese cities with commitments to reduce their carbon footprints.
During a visit to the U.S. in September, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced his country would be instituting its own cap-and-trade system to bring down carbon emissions.
Environmentalists roundly applauded China’s decision to limit its carbon emissions, but Wednesday’s revelation that more coal is being used than assumed has put a damper on hopes for real progress at next month’s U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Paris. Many scientists blame greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide created by the burning of coal and other fossil fuels for global warming.
“China has been under reporting coal consumption,” tweeted the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee’s official account. “Insult to injury for Americans ahead of #ParisProtocol.”
China’s correction on the amount of coal it uses for fuel amounts to almost a billion more tons per year of carbon emitted than previously thought, according to the New York Times report, which said China has been consistently underreporting how much coal it uses since 2000.
The statistics reflect the reality that many developing countries will continue to use coal to power their energy sectors, regardless of the environmental impact, said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association.
Believing otherwise is naive, he said.
“It is further evidence to the importance of coal for developing countries, one of the stubborn facts that this administration and its allies among pressure groups continue to ignore,” he said.
