China’s state-run People’s Daily on Thursday ran an editorial bragging about “remarkable ecological progress over the past ten years,” even though China remains the world’s worst polluter by a wide margin and burns more dirty coal for electric power than ever before.
The article kicked off by extolling the “improved air quality” in Beijing, accompanied by a picture that was fortunately taken on one of the days when the air is clear enough to make the horizon visible.
“The Chinese capital saw 288 days of good air quality last year, or 78.9 percent of the calendar year, up by112 days from 2013. The total number of heavily-polluted days in the city had been slashed by 50 to eight during the same period,” the People’s Daily reported.
On the other hand, the Winter Olympics, held in Beijing only half a year ago, featured warnings to visiting athletes about breathing too deeply from the city’s smoggy atmosphere. Spectators watching around the world were surprised to see how thick the air becomes in Beijing on a bad day.
“Over the past 10 years, China has seen bluer skies, greener mountains, clearer waters and better environment. The Chinese people’s sense of fulfillment, happiness and security has been constantly improved,” the People’s Daily insisted, rattling off statistics about improvements in various Chinese cities.
The People’s Daily waxed poetic about China’s forestation programs and carbon credit markets but did not mention the word “coal” a single time. It is increasingly difficult for Chinese propagandists to burble about “targets of carbon peak and carbon neutrality” while the Communist regime is trying to burn every speck of coal on the planet – and building huge new coal-fired power plants that most certainly are not intended to function for only a year or two.
China’s daily coal production hit a three-month low on Friday, but it was mostly due to heavy rainfall and coronavirus lockdowns, not a reduction in demand. China produced an average of 11.95 million tonnes of coal per day last month, a significant increase over the 10.81 million tonnes of output in August 2021.
China and Mongolia rolled out a new coal-carrying railroad line with great fanfare this week, announcing 145 miles of track that will haul 50 million tons of coal from Mongolian mines to Chinese factories every year. Mongolia’s monthly coal exports to China have already tripled over the past year.
Bloomberg News noted on Wednesday that while Mongolia supplies a great deal of coal to China’s hungry steel mills, “a boost in shipments could help ballast Chinese stockpiles ahead of the winter heating season,” as droughts in several provinces shut down hydropower plants and require “more fossil fuels to be burned around the country to make up the difference.”
China’s voracious appetite for coal is driving up prices around the world and has reportedly increased the number of accidents at thermal coal mines, as producers scramble to meet demand.
As the People’s Daily boasted, China is also spending considerable sums on adding “renewable energy” capacity, but international analysts said in late August there is no sign these additions will have any major effect on China’s coal consumption or CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, China takes great delight in hectoring European nations for “returning to coal” after Russia shut off their supply of natural gas, and expensive “renewable energy” projects proved wholly inadequate to meet the looming winter.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.