Climate leader China plans 200 more airports
Here in the UK we’ve been debating whether to build another runway at Heathrow for about 20 years.
But China is planning to build over 200 new airports by the year 2035, almost doubling its current number.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) published a development report on Monday that aims to add 216 new airports by 2035 and develop a number of regional transport hubs.
According to the CAAC, China had 234 civil airports as of October this year and is expected to have around 450 by 2035, China Daily reports.
Further, the demand for passenger transport in China will account for a quarter of the world’s total and exceed that of the US by 2035, making China the largest air passenger market in the world.
According to this report, a new airport will open in Beijing next year that will be the largest in the world.
Previously, a figure of 136 new airports by 2025 had been quoted.
Note that the vague INDC submitted by China for the Paris Agreement included the action “To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030”. How that is consistent with 200 new airports by 2035 isn’t clear.
Despite this, climate activists continue to proclaim that China is a “climate leader”. Here’s Al Gore’s Climate Alternative Reality Project, listing 5 ways in which China is becoming a “global climate leader” (there’s no mention of airports). Here is Edward Wong of the New York Times declaring that “China has become a global leader in policy and diplomacy on limiting the effects of climate change”. And just this week, expert academic Kevin Gallagher says in the FT that “China enters this week’s Conference of the Parties to the Paris climate agreement poised to take the mantle as the world’s leader on energy and climate change”. Both Wong and Gallagher indulge in a bit of self-righteous finger-wagging, telling China what it “must” or “needs to” do, as if anyone in the Chinese leadership is at all likely to listen.
This week there’s a new article by Patricia Adams talking about a “U-turn” by China. I don’t agree with this terminology in the headline, but it’s worth reading, either via the National Post
China was the climate champion of Paris. Now it’s doing a complete U-turn
or in a longer version, in a report for the GWPF,
The Road from Paris: China’s climate U-turn
To the extent that China tries to keep the ruse going, it will argue that, like the Third World nations it purports to represent, it should not be held to the same standard of emissions reductions and disclosure as the developed nations. But the world has changed in another way since the Paris Agreement was signed: China’s promises and propaganda are no longer believed.
Climate Scepticism 
Ref this:
– “To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030”. How that is consistent with 200 new airports by 2035 isn’t clear. –
this is really easy, they can do whatever they like to 2030, they can double, triple or more emissions by then, as long as they peak by then. So utterly consistent.. in fact a licence to peak as high as they ever possibly might need or want..and a bit more to be on the safe side. 😉 and still keep their commitment.. such are the delusion of activists that thought China was committing anything meaningful with the Paris agreement.
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mis read 2035-2030 – so
… all they need do – is makes sure they build the 200 by 2030..or 300 on the safe side.. as for the 2035 date, well I’m sure a bit of wriggle room, would be, including projects that have started by 2030!..
might need a few hundred coal power stations in 2040.. lay a little bit of foundation work, in 2029.. and that project allready started.. by 2030. exemption… That is what I’d do…
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Or, this being China, where the rule of law barely operates, and where there is a China First policy, more likely they will just carry on doing what they want, and ignore the rest of the world if/when it complains that China has broken its (very limited) Paris pledges as set out in its INDC.
What will/can the rest of the world do about it?
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“To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030”. How that is consistent with 200 new airports by 2035 isn’t clear.”
They will of course be solar powered, solves the problem of night flights over populated areas…
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Mark Wrote: ‘What will/can the rest of the world do about it?’
Why would we care? The ‘commitment’ part of Paris was a transparent game, anyway. If anything, it might be indicative of the capital investment plan (at the time) for the build-out of the facilities, e.g., the ‘concrete and steel’ + highway construction aspects of the airports. For the commitment to be fulfilled, all they have to do is schedule the max activity for that year,
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At least all those ‘planet-saving’ activists will have plenty of places to land when they jet in to China to tell them where they’re going wrong.
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Uh oh lib narrative……
https://capitalresearch.org/article/u-s-achieves-largest-decrease-in-carbon-emissionswithout-the-paris-climate-accord/
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“Official Figures” in China are usually collated through The Party upwards from local official level, the resulting statistics will undoubtedly show that they have achieved their emissions target. Or perhaps some of their new airports will have no planes, serving the new towns they have built which have no populations.
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