China's annual emissions are huge and their plans for coal-fired power stations are incompatible with a habitable planet.
Are you a leader of a Global North country, wondering how you can persuade them to do better?
IDEAS... 💡🧵
First up, make sure your per capita emissions are lower than theirs - looking at you, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan and many others.
Also remember the Global North's historic emissions are off the scale, and almost all that carbon you burnt in the last 200 years is still in the atmosphere.
Not much you can do about that now except decarbonise as quickly as possible to atone for past sins.
So next, make sure you're not doing anything you might want to ask China to refrain from.
You're not drilling for oil or building pipelines or coal mines or expanding airports or building roads or new killing machines are you?
Otherwise it's "Do as I say, not as I do".
Won't it be a disaster if China develops an appetite for meat like the USA's?
Yes, but it will also be a disaster if Global North countries continue with high carbon diets, so what are you doing to make the shift?
Does your country import loads of crap no-one needs from China by fossil-fuelled ships and planes? Yes? Why not stop?
Does your country have a plan to slash emissions in line with limiting global heating to 1.5°C?
Unless you are @barrowpresident of the Gambia, the answer is no, so why not get your own house in order?
You may have heard that just one country - Gambia 🇬🇲 which hardly has any emissions anyway - is currently on course to deliver climate action that is in alignment with limiting global heating to 1.5°C.
The planet only cares about total emissions 📈. If we were to limit heating to 1.5°C then all countries would need to do their part. When some countries drag their heels, the physics is clear that others need to pick up the slack. And right now, no-one is doing that.
So how are those "critically insufficient" countries coping with climate breakdown so far?
Parts of Iran 🇮🇷 are already turning into dustbowl.
Under construction, running & planned coal plants are declining rapidly around the world. New research shows remaining expansion exists primarily in China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey and Bangladesh. carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how…
Burning coal is about the best way of destroying the climate.
But the strange, disturbing thing is this: the remaining champions of coal are amongst the countries which will be worst affected by climate breakdown. 🧵
In XR's first global financial action, brave rebels around the world decided to show their banks that we have all had enough of their environmental destruction ⚠️
We are raising the alarm about the billions banks pour into fossil fuel projects, endangering all life on earth 🌎
“School children who go out to protest are not protesting, they are begging for their lives. 400,000 deaths annually due to climate change. We are in biological annihilation: 1 million species at the risk of extinction, 70% of world’s plants endangered. ...
How are we to live in these times with the possibility of all life on earth dying? How are we to talk about business opportunities and business as usual? It’s not.
We have to be honest with each other, we have to tell each other the truth. ...
We have to allow that feeling of grief in. Because when you feel grief you feel love, and when you feel love you feel courage. ...