Report: China, India, Others Will Miss Paris Agreement ‘Green’ Goals by 110 Percent

The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) and Stockholm Environment Institute published a report Wednesday that said governments around the world, led by fast-growing India and world’s worst polluter China, plan to exceed the Paris Agreement’s limits on fossil fuels by more than 110 percent by 2030.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the report a “startling indictment of runaway climate carelessness” and fumed that “governments are literally doubling down on fossil fuel production,” which “spells double trouble for the people and the planet.”

The “production gap” described in the UNEP report will surely be a topic of conversation when U.N. officials, climate change activists, and government officials from around the world descend upon Dubai in a mighty fleet of private jets for the COP28, the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference, from November 30 to December 12.

The report surveyed 20 countries that produce and consume the majority of the world’s fossil fuels, headed up by India and China. Both have rapidly growing industrial sectors and neither is interested in restraining their energy needs to appease climate activists, although China loves to talk about it while exhorting Western countries to make greater sacrifices, and it wholeheartedly favors growing the electric vehicle (EV) industry, which Beijing has under hammerlock control.

China and India are both founding members of BRICS, the economic cooperative that recently invited terror-sponsoring Iran to become a member. BRICS strongly believes that Western nations should bear the burden of fighting climate change, while its members are exempted from restrictions that might slow their industrial development.

Iran joined the coalition at the same time as oil giants Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the group already includes warlike oil magnate Russia, so the BRICS attitude toward making devastating cuts to fossil fuel usage is unlikely to change any time soon.

According to UNEP and Stockholm Environment Institute researchers, India will increase its coal production by a stunning 460 percent by 2030, plus increases of 83 percent in gas and 29 percent in oil. China is already producing and burning peak amounts of coal, producing 57 percent of the world’s output and importing even more to fuel its energy appetite.

The report gave China a great deal of credit for spending heavily on green energy and pledging to “achieve carbon neutrality before 2060,” without dwelling on how China’s feverish construction of new coal-burning power plants might call the sincerity of its climate promises into question. If China’s climate pledges are serious, then it is currently spending billions of dollars to build coal plants that it will stop using a year or two after they come online and spending billions more to stockpile mountains of coal that it will never use.

UNEP found similar, but smaller, contrasts in 17 of the 20 countries it surveyed, dinging them for making “net zero” pledges while continuing to increase fossil fuel production and consumption. Researchers said the “disconnect” between production increases and climate promises is evident for coal, gas, and oil, bringing global carbon dioxide emissions to the highest levels on record in 2022.

Actually meeting those Paris Agreement pledges would require all nations to almost completely abandon coal by 2040 and cut their use of oil and gas by 75 percent by 2050, which seems profoundly unrealistic, especially for “Global South” developing nations with fast-growing industrial sectors.

“Major producer countries have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions and launched initiatives to reduce emissions from fossil fuel production, but none have committed to reduce coal, oil, and gas production in line with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade,” the report complained.

The report admitted that Western democracies will have to take the biggest hits to their lifestyles and industrial capacities to make up for nations such as the BRICS roster.

“An equitable transition away from fossil fuel production must recognize countries’ differentiated responsibilities and capabilities,” the authors said. “Governments with great transition capacity should aim for more ambitious reductions and help finance the transition processes in countries with limited capacities.”