Irresponsible Trump, responsible China; that is the message BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt seemed to be sending us by juxtaposing the news that the US president had repealed Barack Obama’s ‘endangerment finding’ and that China’s carbon emissions fell slightly last year. Trump’s critics like to portray him as a rogue figure in a world which is otherwise committed to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions. But is there any truth in that?
The endangerment finding does not appear to have had any obvious impact on US emissions
The endangerment finding was a piece of legalese issued in a 2009 ruling by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It stated that six greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorcarbons, perfluourocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride – are a danger to human health on the grounds that excessive concentrations of them in the air contribute to global warming and all kinds of meteorological disasters. There are valid criticisms to be made of many of the assertions, such as its appearing to point the finger at carbon emissions for more intense hurricanes. Even now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organisation (NOAA) says it is too premature to conclude that there has been any change in hurricane activity outside natural variability. But there is also a wider point to be made: the endangerment finding in itself did nothing to boost technologies which might reduce the emission of the above gases – it was merely a boon for lawyers wanting to construct class actions against fossil fuel companies, car manufacturers and the rest.
The endangerment finding does not appear to have had any obvious impact on US emissions. US carbon emissions have been falling all century; in fact they were falling a little more sharply before the endangerment finding was issued than they did in the years afterwards: they decreased from 6.02 billion tonnes in 2000, to 5.49 billion tonnes in 2009, then to 4.90 billion tonnes in 2024. One of the main reasons for this has been a switch from coal to gas power as successive US administrations – including Obama’s as well as Trump’s – have pursued a policy of exploiting shale gas in order to achieve national energy self-sufficiency. The fall in emissions, by the way, continued throughout Trump’s first term – the dramatic switch in policy, when he withdrew from the Paris Agreement, doesn’t seem to have had any great effect on US emissions.
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As for China, green campaigners shouldn’t cheer too soon. The fall in Chinese emissions last year was of the order of 0.3 per cent. And while China has been investing heavily in renewable energy (as well as continuing to pump money into fossil fuels), the main reason for the slight fall was a drop in emissions from cement manufacturing. This has rather less to do with government policy than with a slump in the construction industry. Nor is China’s slight fall in emissions unprecedented: emissions also fell slightly between 2014 and 2016 for similar economic reasons, before rebounding. So the narrative that China has finally turned the corner on emissions and that it will be downhill all the way from here is somewhat premature.
The real message to be taken from the US and China is that the big emitters – and most of the world, come to that – have no intention of following the example set by Britain and other European countries and sacrificing economic growth in order to reach net zero targets. While they may dabble in policies which reduce emissions, they are not going to try to go the whole hog and eliminate net emissions altogether. Economic growth will remain their priority. The overall global picture is that emissions continue to grow, and that the only occasions on which they have fallen have been global recessions.
It isn’t Trump’s America which is the outlier – the US president is merely more honest than most in putting economic growth over environmental concerns. It is Britain and the EU who stand apart in sacrificing their industries to hit carbon targets. Of course, they are not really reducing emissions by anything like how much they claim to be doing – they tend to like counting only territorial emission, ignore the emissions they have offshored to China and elsewhere.
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