Although it appeared a little after the traditional pantomime season, the latest articlei in the Guardian to fuel my ire, did make me think of pantomime, for reasons which, dear reader, will become apparent if you read on.
I’m talking about this: “West accused of ‘climate hypocrisy’ as emissions dwarf those of poor countries – Average Briton produces more carbon in two days than Congolese person does in entire year, study finds”. It appeared on the Guardian’s website on 28th January 2022, and in turn was prompted by “A New Year’s Resolution on the US’s Climate Hypocrisy”, which appeared on the websiteii of the Center for Global Development on 7th January 2022. Or you can read the UK version, with virtually the same title (A New Year’s Resolution on the UK’s Climate Hypocrisyiii).
These two paragraphs from the Guardian article sum up what it’s all about:
The study, which highlights the “vast energy inequality” between rich and poor countries countries [sic], found that each Briton produces 200 times the climate emissions of the average Congolese person, with people in the US producing 585 times as much. By the end of January, the carbon emitted by someone living in the UK will surpass the annual emissions of citizens of 30 low- and middle-income countries, it found.
Euan Ritchie, a policy analyst at CGD Europe, said his work was prompted by the “climate hypocrisy” of western countries, including the UK and the US, that have pledged to stop aid funding to fossil fuel projects in developing states.
And no doubt it is fair – very fair indeed – to point out that the per capita GHG emissions of US and UK citizens are massively higher than those of poor developing countries, mostly in Africa and Asia. However, why single out the USA and UK? Why not mention EU countries, for instance? As the EDGAR websiteiv makes clear, UK per capita emissions have declined more rapidly than those of the EU, and from a higher level in 1990. They were, by 2019 (the last date available on the database) lower than those of the EU.
But most tellingly, why not talk about China’s emissions? On a per capita basis, over the same time scale, far from reducing, they have quadrupled. Not just quadrupled, but overtaken quite substantially those of the EU, and now exceeding the per capita emissions of UK citizens by almost 50%. Iceland, curiously for a country with great geothermal resources, has per capita CO2 emissions at twice those of the UK, and they have increased by close to 25% since 1990. In fact, there are plenty of unlikely candidates in the list of high per capita emitters. The following countries (as of 2019) all have per capita emissions at least twice as high as those of the UK:
Australia; Barbados; Bahrain; Brunei; Canada; China; Curacao; Estonia; Gibraltar; Iceland; Kazakhstan; Luxembourg; Mongolia; New Caledonia; Oman; Palau; Qatar; Russia; Saudia Arabia; Seychelles; South Korea; Taiwan; Trinidad & Tobago; Turkmenistan; United Arab Emirates; and USA.
There is a very long list indeed (too long to mention here in detail) of countries with per capita emissions below the above level but ahead of the UK’s. By the way, who would have thought it? The winners, by a country mile, in the above list, are New Caledonia and Palau.
And let’s talk about cumulative emissionsv while we’re at it. Again, we find China in second place (with 12.7%), behind only the USA (admittedly way out in front, with 25%). Russia is on 6% and Japan is on 4%. Even South Africa is on 1.3%. According to Carbon Briefvi the UK lies in just 8th place, behind the USA, China, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Germany and India, with Japan and Canada not far behind.
So why pick on the UK? In 8th place in terms of cumulative emissions, and well down the pecking order in both total national emissions and per capita emissions. China and Russia (as examples) are well ahead of the UK on any measure, and India is ahead in terms of cumulative and annual emissions. Why does the article (and that on which it is based) ignore them?
Especially given this statement:
“Solving the climate crisis in the medium term is the responsibility of high emitting countries, not only because they caused the problem but logically, it’s where high emissions are concentrated,” said Mutiso, who is Kenyan.
That would be China, then (and increasingly India).
I loved this quote from the Guardian article, by the way, a good point on which to end:
“It’s well known renewable energy is intermittent and needs to be backed up by other sources. Telling African countries they just need solar is completely hypocritical and colonial.”
But it’s OK, apparently, to insist that the UK has to rely on intermittent renewable energy despite the fact that solar power at this latitude is a joke in winter, at the time when energy is most needed. The irony appears to pass the Guardian by completely.
Conclusion
The thing about pantomimes is that the audience can see the villains all too clearly while those prancing about on the stage either can’t (or perhaps more accurately) pretend not to see them. There are times when the debate about climate change looks increasingly like a pantomime.
Endnotes
i https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/28/west-accused-of-climate-hypocrisy-as-emissions-dwarf-those-of-poor-countries
ii https://www.cgdev.org/blog/new-years-resolution-us-climate-hypocrisy
iii https://www.cgdev.org/blog/new-years-resolution-uk-climate-hypocrisy
iv https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2020#emissions_table
v https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
vi https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change
Climate Scepticism 
Yes, but no Britons want to go to live in the Congo, while quite a few Congolese would like to come and live here, no doubt. The author lives in a country with better healthcare than the Congo. It has better education, better transport, more facilities, better (kof) government. In short, one of the mentioned countries is a basket case, the other is still (just about) civilised. That’s not just my colonial attitude talking.
Wiki:
The other Congo is not much better, in case the author was referring to that country – corruption, election fraud, slavery, inequality, a Mugabe-lite president…
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Jit,
Yes it is high time we all lived like the Congolese and dropped the hypocricy that inevitably accompanies high standards of living and energy security.
Meanwhile, the pious but self-enervated West now finds itself in the cross-hairs of the hypocritical Russians and Chinese. No doubt they will make their move once we have achieved the necessary levels of self-satisfaction.
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I try hard, both out of politeness and as a matter of policy, to avoid being rude about people. However, viewing the behaviour of those who are determined to run the UK down, force us to rely on unreliable, unpredictable and expensive forms of energy and in the process make us reliable on bad actors around the world for our reliable energy supplies to fill the gap, all the while making no complaint about those whose “climate sins” are so much worse than ours, I can’t help being critical of them.
Why do they do it? Are greenhouse gases a problem only if emitted by affluent westerners? Are Russian, Chinese and Indian emissions on a larger scale somehow less dangerous in their eyes?
I have never been an advocate of the theory that climate warriors have anti-western sentiment as their primary motivation, but sometimes I find myself wondering.
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Mark:
“I have never been an advocate of the theory that climate warriors have anti-western sentiment as their primary motivation, but sometimes I find myself wondering.”
I’m not sure about anti-western sentiment, but the movement had its origins in the NIMBYISM of various people wanting to keep the hoi-polloi of the boomer generation out of ‘their’ allegedly pristine wildernesses.
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The reason tiny island states like Barbados and New Caledonia (which isn’t yet a state, being part of France) are such heavy emitters is surely because they’re not big enough to justify building expensive gas power stations, coal investment is no longer underwritten by the World Bank, and so they rely largely on diesel. People will put up with high energy prices on a tropical island where heating costs are negligible, but of course it makes lots of basic electricity-based services like hospitals and supermarket freezers rather expensive, and industrial development impossible.
The poor Guardian is caught in its ever more tangled web of motivations, trying to appeal to a US audience while still obsessed with post-colonial self-flagellation, AND avoiding mentioning that EV batteries rely on cobalt extracted by Congolese children. They’re preparing their readership for coming blackouts, when they will be able to scold us with: “think of the poor Africans, who haven’t got any electricity at all.”
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“China’s emissions of two potent greenhouse gases rise 78% in decade
Figure represents 64-66% of global output of tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane, MIT study finds”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/15/chinas-emissions-of-two-potent-greenhouse-gases-rise-78-in-decade
Emissions of two of the most potent greenhouse gases have substantially increased in China over the last decade, a study has found.
Perfluorocarbons are used in the manufacturing processes for flat-panel TVs and semiconductors, or as by-products from aluminium smelting. They are far more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2, and can persist in the Earth’s atmosphere for thousands of years, unlike CO2 which can persist for up to 200 years.
A research team led by Minde An at Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the emissions of two specific perfluorocarbons, tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane, both with atmospheric lifetimes of 50,000 and 10,000 years respectively.
By analysing atmospheric observations in nine cities across China from 2011 to 2021, they found that both gases exhibited an increase of 78% in emissions in China and, by 2020, represented 64-66% of global emissions for tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane. However, while levels of fluorocarbon emissions are increasing at an alarming rate, CO2 still accounts for about 76% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
The increase in emissions from China was sufficient to account for the global emission increases over that same period, suggesting that China is the dominant driver in tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane release into the atmosphere globally.
The emissions were found to mainly originate from the less populated industrial zones in the western regions of China, and are thought to be due to the role of perfluorocarbons in the aluminium industry.
China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of aluminium, with the country’s production reaching a record-high output of 41.5m tonnes last year.
With the rapid expansion of China’s aluminium and semiconductor industries, these ongoing high levels of fluorocarbon emissions could pose a particular threat to China’s carbon neutrality goal and global climate mitigation...
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“Green energy sector drove more than 90% of China’s investment growth last year, analysis finds
Industry bigger than all but seven world economies, and accounts for more than third of China’s economic growth”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/05/china-green-energy-sector-investment-growth
Perhaps it’s badly reported, perhaps I’m no economist, but if 90% of investment growth generated more than a third of economic growth, then it sounds as though the other 10% of investment drove nearly two thirds of growth – in which case it was the non-“green” investment that delivered the goods. Meanwhile:
…China’s coal industry is also a powerful political force and it will be contesting the speed of transition. Last year, developers submitted proposals to build a total 161 GW of new coal-fired power plants and more are in the pipeline. The future direction of the country’s energy sector should become clearer next month, when the government unveils its next five-year plan.
Climate campaigners said it was time for China to make up its mind. “This is a historic turning point: solar power is set to overtake coal in China for the first time in 2026. This is maybe the clearest demonstration yet that clean energy has won – on cost, scale, and air quality,” said Andreas Sieber, the head of political strategy at 350.org.
“However, China is responding to coal’s economic defeat by building more of it. With around 290 GW of new coal capacity already permitted or under construction, and another record year for approvals, the country is … proving coal is obsolete while rushing to entrench it. This mostly serves a coal industry racing against time. The consequence is predictable: stranded assets, higher system costs, and a transition made harder.”
Whatever other faults they have, the leaders of the CCP aren’t stupid. They certainly aren’t proving that coal is obselete – quite the opposite – and they clearly don’t regard the many new coal-fired power plants as stranded assets. Western campaigners are whistling in the dark to keep their spirits up.
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What an absurd editorial in the Guardian (it’s based, of course, on more propagandic “research” from Carbon Brief):
“The Guardian view on Donald Trump and the climate crisis: the US is in reverse while China ploughs ahead”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/15/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trump-and-the-climate-crisis-the-us-is-in-reverse-while-china-ploughs-ahead
Even the editorial contains this:
…the numbers suggest that the decline in China’s carbon intensity – emissions per unit of GDP – was below the target set in the last five-year plan, making it hard to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement. The shift in emissions may not prove enduring. There is fear that China’s focus may change; the next five-year plan, due in March, will be key. Some subsidies for renewable power have already been withdrawn. The installation of huge quantities of renewable energy infrastructure has been accompanied by a surge in constructing coal-fired power plants, though the hope is that these are intended primarily as a fallback. [My emphasis].
There are other grave concerns, including evidence of the use of forced labour of Uyghur Muslims in solar-panel production in Xinjiang. China’s chokehold on critical minerals hampers the ability of others to develop their own technology. And while its cheap [sic] renewables technology has resulted in the cheapest electricity in history, it has also hit manufacturers in other countries….[The link used to to make the claim is to a Carbon Brief report about an IEA report].
China’s cheap electricity is down to its massive reliance on coal, not renewables. It is this, among other things, that gives it a competitive advantage against developed countries, which are now exporting manufacturing, jobs, and emissions to China.
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Seems the Guardian conveniently ignores the obvious, sad really.
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“As Trump retreats from climate goals, China is becoming a green superpower”
BBC link.
Some balance, but no mention of the new coal plants, whose lifetime extends beyond the alleged Net Zero target.
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Jit,
I was just reading it. As for coal, this is worth repeating, from the same BBC article:
…China is running two races at the same time.
It is trying to keep the lights on for the world’s second-largest economy, and its 1.4 billion people, while building renewables capacity that can replace coal.
That is one of the reasons the country is still relying on fossil fuels and building coal plants.
China is using more power every year and coal was still responsible for generating 58% of that in 2024 – although the rapid growth of wind and solar power means they were contributing 18%.…
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BBC article headline:
“As Trump retreats from climate goals, China is becoming a green superpower”
From the BBC article:
China is using more power every year and coal was still responsible for generating 58% of that in 2024 – although the rapid growth of wind and solar power means they were contributing 18%
From the latest Ember report:
In 2024, wind and solar together overtook coal in a historic first for the United States
In 2024, wind and solar together generated more electricity in the US than coal for the first time, with coal’s share in the mix falling to an all-time low of under 15%
...The demand rise was predominantly met with higher solar, wind and gas generation, which also made up for a fall in coal generation (-22 TWh).
2024 saw the largest-ever increase in solar generation in the US (+64 TWh).
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025/major-countries-and-regions/#united-states
But the US is in retreat and China is becoming a green superpower. Words no longer mean what they used to mean.
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See Paul Homewood here: https://www.climateskeptic.org/p/why-is-the-bbc-holding-up-china-as.
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Thanks for the link Robin, which states the obvious but conveniently neglected “context”.
“What the BBC fail to mention is the fact that everything in China happens on a giant scale, because the country itself is so big. China produces 35 times as much electricity as the UK and more than the US and EU combined. So of course they produce more solar and wind power than we do.”
You have to wonder if they only give the “context” when it suits their narrative, Heaven forbid!!!
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Jo Nova on the new coal plants in China: a real hockey stick.
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“China sets lowest GDP growth target for decades as it braces for economic slowdown”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/05/china-gdp-growth-target-economic-slowdown
…Among the targets laid out in the five-year plan, the plan for reducing China’s carbon intensity was pored over by climate experts. The plan calls for a 17% cut in carbon intensity – the amount of CO2 released per unit of economic activity – by 2030.
Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the target “would leave China short of its pledge to reduce carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade”.
Challenges in the first half of the decade – including the Covid-19 pandemic and a reliance on heavy industry – mean that China failed to reduce its carbon intensity by enough between 2020 and 2025 to make good progress on its 2030 target.
Recently published data showed that China’s carbon intensity fell 12% between 2020 and 2025, well short of the 18% target laid out in the 14th five-year plan. “The 17% target proposed today indicates a quiet recalibration, effectively acknowledging how difficult the original 2030 goal has become,” Li said….
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Surely China is in a fantastic position to withstand the energy crisis, what with it being a global leader in renewables and everything?
“The Iran war is causing a global energy crisis – can China withstand it?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv9lzn0816o
China has long braced for a Gulf oil supply shock – but the Iran war’s disruption of a key global shipping route is now putting its resilience to the test….
…The blockade has led to a global oil shortage which has rocked Gulf-reliant Asian countries hard – with the Philippines mandating four-day work weeks to save fuel, and Indonesia seeking ways to avoid burning through reserves that will last just weeks.
China, the world’s largest buyer of oil, is also feeling the strain….
...As the world’s second-largest consumer of oil after the US, China uses an estimated 15 to 16 million barrels of oil daily, various market analysts told the BBC.
The oil is mainly used for China’s massive transportation network of cars, trucks and jets. And much of it comes from abroad.
Gulf countries are a major source of the oil China ships in,with barrels from Saudi Arabia and Iran accounting for more than 10% of its imports each, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA)….
But China is set fair to weather the storm:
…But the country sits in a better position than its neighbours, after years of statecraft that have prepared it for a global energy crisis.…
Renewables? Nope…:
...While many Asian countries have relied heavily on oil from Gulf nations, Russian oil accounts for nearly a fifth of China’s energy imports. That makes Moscow by far Beijing’s biggest oil supplier, despite sanctions from the US and Europe.
Coal is also the dominant source of power for most of China’s electricity, and is available in abundance locally.
China is the world’s largest coal producer, accounting for more than half of global production.
Oil and gas meanwhile account for just over a quarter of China’s total energy mix, according to estimates published in state media – making the country less dependent on the resource than Europe and the US.
Beijing has over the years taken advantage of lower crude prices and the abundance of supply from Gulf states to build one of the world’s biggest oil reserves, says Ole Hansen, Saxo Bank’s head of commodity strategy.
In January and February of this year alone, Beijing bought 16% more crude compared to the same time period a year earlier, according to its customs administration.
Iran, whose oil is sanctioned by the US, has been a key supplier of cheap crude for China, with reports suggesting that Beijing buys more than 80% of Iran’s oil exports.
Vessel-tracking data since the Iran war started indicates that some of this oil is still arriving in China – though analysts disagree on the exact size of China’s oil stockpile.
According to trade analytics group Kpler, more than 46 million barrels of Iranian crude oil – several days’ worth of energy – currently sit in tankers along the South China Sea.
Hansen says that estimates show China has built up reserves of around 900 million barrels – just under three months’ worth of imports. Figures from Columbia University, cited by Chinese state media, said China had petrol reserves of some 1.4 billion barrels....
Belatedly, the article mentions renewables:
…Wind, nuclear, solar and hydropower generated more than a third of China’s electricity in 2025, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. But the country has since expanded its renewables grid significantly, with estimates saying more than half the installed capacity is now from clean sources.…
Note the legerdemain. Electricity is far from being all of China’s energy use. At best, electricity represents 30% of total energy consumption there, so the sources mentioned above (which slip in nuclear) amount to 10% of total energy consumption. Coal still rpvodes 60% of electricity generation. Renewables provide a far smaller percentage of China’s electricity production than they already do of the UK’s. Coal provides more than half of China’s primary energy use. Yet China is always touted as a far-sighted renewables leader. Thus the article ends with stuff like this:
…Energy economics researcher Roger Fouquet said China’s “ambitious” transition to renewables is not merely an environmental move, but has also helped to protect its economy from global risks like those we’re seeing with the Iran conflict.…
The reality is that China is better-placed than the UK to withstand an energy crisis caused by the war in Iran because it had the foresight to build up reserves of fossil fuels, and because it heavily exploits its own fossil fuels. Authors at The Conversation please take note.
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The Guardian has the same story, and supports my conclusion (above) that:
The reality is that China is better-placed than the UK to withstand an energy crisis caused by the war in Iran because it had the foresight to build up reserves of fossil fuels, and because it heavily exploits its own fossil fuels.
“China has been preparing for a global energy crisis for years. It is paying off now
As other Asian economies race to conserve energy, China has huge reserves of oil and gas as well as alternative energy sources like wind and solar”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/20/china-oil-reserves-global-energy-crisis
Xi Jinping has been preparing for a crisis like this for years. China must secure its energy supply “in its own hands”, its president was reported to have said during a visit to one of its vast oilfields in 2021.…
…Its energy system has “significant buffers”, Michal Meidan, the head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, an independent research institute, explained in a recent paper – from huge reserves of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to a robust domestic supply, including alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar.…
...Beijing does not disclose the size of its oil reserves, and estimates vary significantly. But it is widely agreed to be sitting on a massive stockpile: about 1.4bn barrels, according to Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
After the war began, Beijing instructed its own refineries to stop exports….
The Guardian also does as the BBC did and tries to push the renewables narrative, yet the figure it quotes for the proportion of electricity generated by renewables in China is less than the proportion generated by renewables in the UK:
…Its renewable sources of power have meanwhile expanded rapidly in recent years, curbing its dependance on fossil fuels. Energy thinktank Ember estimates that wind, solar and hydropower generated about 31% of China’s electricity in 2024.…
The key (Ed Miliband, please note) is this. China has:
…huge reserves of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to a robust domestic supply…
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“Energy thinktank Ember estimates that wind, solar and hydropower generated about 31% of China’s electricity in 2024“
…and of that hydro and “other renewables” accounted for roughly half so wind and solar produced around 15% while coal produced 58%…..
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