Will China Be the Enforcer of the Paris Climate Agreement?

Yves here. While China has made impressive strides in technologies that reduce carbon emissions, I have trouble squaring that with their plans to build more coal-fired electricity generating plants.

It’s amazing what can be done by a government determined to do it. In the U.S., our approach to the climate crisis is to use the “invisible hand” of the market and be careful not to get in the way of “wealth creation” (for billionaires). The Chinese don’t have those constraints. Yes, they want to make their billionaires wealthier, but that’s not their primary goal. There’s a very nationalist strain in China, and to a greater extent, I think, than in the U.S., the Chinese government wants what’s best for China, and not just its wealthy.

Put differently, the economic policy of the Chinese government is to grow the country, including its billionaires. It often seems that U.S. economic policy is to grow our billionaires at the expense of the country. That may be no more evident than in the following story.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/will-china-be-the-enforcer-of-the-paris-climate-agreement.html