Surprise ! China has reduced its carbon dioxide (CO) emissions2) by 3% in March, its first decline since the return to post-pandemic normal. GHG emissions have peaked in China, according to experts. They should now continue to fall. Suddenly, in Canada and elsewhere, we can apologize a little less and say: “Yes, but meanwhile, in China…”
After 14 consecutive months of increase, CO emissions2 fell by 3% in China last March. It’s only a month, but, according to the British specialists from the Carbon Brief site, it’s more than that. “A lasting decline in Chinese CO emissions from 20242 is possible if its adoption of clean energy sources continues at the same pace as now. »
In any case, if China were to continue on this path, the promoters of projects which refuse to disappear, such as the famous third highway link in Quebec, may have to rethink their business. This new bridge (or tunnel, or both, it depends on the day) is vital for the cars which will be traveling there in greater numbers in 30 or 40 years, they warn. They forget to apply the same sense of urgency to other forms of transportation and the climate fight.
Meanwhile, the North American auto industry is also procrastinating. It continues to postpone its emissions reduction targets until later. Manufacturers are reinvesting the sums promised for the development of zero-emission vehicles in the development of new, more powerful gasoline engines.
And rails of the west metro at Snowdon station in Montreal have been lying unused since at least 1988, awaiting an extension which also continues to be postponed.
In short, the more we continue to increase the place given to trucks and automobiles, the more we slow down the country’s short-term decarbonization efforts, since they are essentially based on the decarbonization of transport.
If this happens, in a few years, the meaning of the statement “during that time in China” risks being reversed and will mean that we had to do more, and not less, at home, to reduce our carbon footprint. We really won’t have any more lessons to teach anyone in this area…
Water in gas
Canada is nothing compared to China, and Quebec is even more negligible. This is the assertion made by many politicians, businesses and people across the country who are reluctant to submit to increasingly critical demands to reduce their carbon footprint. They are critical if we wish to collectively achieve the less and less realistic limit of 1.5°C of global warming set by the Paris Agreement signed by Canada.
In absolute terms, it’s true: we collectively emit much less air pollution in Canada than China. Canada emitted 708 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2022. Quebec emitted 79 million tonnes that year. In China, 11.4 billion tonnes were emitted in 2022.
In Ottawa, last month, we were pleased to have reduced the country’s carbon intensity by 6% below the 2019 emissions level (752 megatons), and by 7% below that of 2005. GHG emissions from Quebec declined by around 6% in 2022 compared to 2019, and by 14% since 2005.
China also reduced its GHG emissions between 2019 and 2022… by a little more than 10%. They were 12.7 billion tonnes the year before the explosion of COVID-19 (the suffix of which, remember, is the year of the discovery of this coronavirus).
That said, China still has a long way to go to return to its 2005 level of GHG emissions, which was 7.3 billion tonnes of CO2…
Objective 2 tonnes
The situation is reversed when we divide these quantities of greenhouse gases by the number of inhabitants of the two countries. In 2022, Canada emitted the equivalent of 15.2 tonnes of GHG per capita. Emissions in China in the same year were equivalent to 8.9 tonnes of GHG per capita, according to the internationally recognized independent EDGAR database.
Quebec, which in this calculation does not have to bear the heavy polluting emissions of the Alberta oil sector, even if it is one of the largest customers, emitted in 2022 approximately 9 tonnes of CO2 per inhabitant.
Quebec, like Canada, has its GHG reduction targets which extend between 2030 and 2050. They are not very restrictive, since they have been diluted several times. At this stage, we can suspect that they will not be achieved, whatever our elected officials say.
Many consumers in Quebec seem to want to reduce their carbon footprint. Despite everything we hear on the subject, 91% more electric vehicles were sold in the province during the first three months of 2024 than during the same period in 2023.
In Ottawa, it is calculated that every Canadian will have to reduce their annual CO emissions2 to 2 tonnes, if we want to hope to achieve the official climate targets of 2030. In a context where the oil sector refuses to act, and where the extremely wealthy banking sector finances this obstinacy, it is difficult to see how we will get there.
By persisting in carrying out costly highway projects, which some go so far as to describe as counterproductive, we are going, it seems to me, in a direction from which even China, these days, seems to have diverted…