Give China a Cheer for Making Polluters Pay
Its long-awaited national carbon trading market has deficiencies, but at least it’s (nearly) here.
China is getting serious about reining in polluters.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergChina’s ambitious pledge to decarbonize by 2060 requires the world’s top polluter to dramatically raise the cost of spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A long-awaited national carbon market that is finally set to begin trading this year will be less demanding and more limited than initially anticipated, if draft plans are a guide. It’s worth welcoming anyway.
Beijing could have done better. Support from the top, plus an unparalleled ability to push through change at scale, give the country a significant advantage. At the same time, China’s command-economy traits make it tough to apply a market-based solution, especially one that isn’t producing the right numbers elsewhere either. For one, power market reform is a work in progress. Moreover, China remains a developing economy on many measures, and its regions don’t always move at the same speed.