In any formulated strategy, the outlier is always China, which has shown little indication that it will slow any of its economic expansion—and the resulting massive levels of pollution being created—to satisfy a Western request to control future climate conditions; even if those future conditions are subject to human control (which many scientists are beginning to doubt).
China is estimated to produce 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon by 2020—compared to the 1.6 billion metric tons the United States produced in 2007 and the 8.5 billion tons the entire world produces now; making any plans of the US to severely dislocate its economy to reduce carbon meaningless.
An excerpt from the Breakthrough Institute article:
“China's greenhouse gas emissions could more than double by 2020, according to a new report released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“Beijing has been reluctant to release official data on greenhouse gas from the nation's fast-growing use of coal, oil and gas. This new study from the state-run institute breaks that reticence and sends another clear reminder that China is where our quest for climate stability will be won or lost.
"To a significant degree, our planet's energy and environmental future is now being written in China," says the study's authors. And the only way that story has a happy ending is if China has access to clean and cheap energy sources to power its sustainable development…
“The net total of natural sinks for carbon is estimated at around 2 billion metric tons of carbon per year. That means if we hope to reach climate stability at any level of atmospheric concentration of CO2, net global human-caused emissions must fall below that level. Returning to lower concentrations of CO2, as US climate scientist James Hansen and others have called for, would require global emissions to fall far below the level of natural sinks, calling for at least an 80% cut in global emissions from today's levels by mid-century.
“Needless to say, if a single nation alone emits far more than that amount in the coming decades, climate stability of any kind will be impossible.”
