China has achieved a new negative record in 2019: it has emitted more greenhouse gases than all developed countries combined, according to a new study by the Rhodium Group published on Thursday. A milestone that means multiplying by four its contribution to global warming in three decades, since in 1990 it barely accounted for 25% compared to the rest of the developed countries.
China’s emissions of the six greenhouse gases declared under the Kyoto protocol, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, rose to 14.09 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2019, exceeding the total from member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) by about 30 million tonnes, according to the New York-based climate research group.
The sheer scale of China’s emissions underscores the importance of President Xi Jinping’s push to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. China accounted for 27% of global emissions in 2019, while the US, the second largest emitter, contributed 11%, while India surpassed for the first time with about 6.6% of the world total.
However, China also has the largest population in the world, so its emissions per capita are still much lower than those of the US. In historical terms, OECD members remain the biggest culprits in global warming, having released four times more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than China since 1750.
“China’s history as a top emitter is relatively short compared to developed countries, many of which were more than a century ahead,” the researchers said. “Current global warming is the result of emissions from both the recent past and the more distant past.” Precisely, China that expects the developed countries to be the ones that cut their emissions the fastest, to compensate for the historical advantage they have enjoyed.
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