Could China Now Become a Green Superpower?

China produces most of the world’s solar and wind capacity and leads in electric vehicle sales. However, it’s also the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and has been reluctant to set climate targets for reducing emissions despite recent pressure from the U.S., low-lying island nations, and other Western countries.

In 2023, China installed nearly 60 percent of worldwide solar capacity, and now there is a huge gap between it on the one hand and the U.S. and Europe on the other in the production of solar and wind power. According to the International Energy Agency, last year, just under 60 percent of new electric car registrations were in China, with about 25 percent in Europe and ten percent in the U.S. One Chinese company’s electric car sales surpassed those of Tesla.

The country will now have the opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum to be left by the U.S. as the second Trump administration begins. The New York Times reported on Friday, November 9, that people working on the Trump transition team have already prepared an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, as he did in 2017. He has said he views climate change as a “hoax,” and has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for oil, starting on day one of his administration. He may also cut subsidies for electric vehicles.  

Attracta Mooney, of the Financial Times, told WBUR that China could now become the world’s green superpower. That seems more possible with less outside pressure on China from the U.S. under the new administration. As Bloomberg reports, Chinese companies could help the world, especially the Global South to move to renewable power, and many of them are already doing that by investing in factories overseas.

In addition to China, the European Union could help lead the world’s efforts to sustainability. According to Ember, a global energy think tank, in the last five years, wind and solar capacity has grown in Europe by 65 percent and greenhouse gas emissions have dropped.

The COP29 meeting of 195 countries to discuss climate change begins on November 11 with a stated goal of reducing emissions to keep global warming stay below 1.5 degrees C.

As Bloomberg Law reports, in its first term, the Trump administration moved to reduce regulations based on the Clean Water Act and made it difficult to oppose construction projects that affected wetlands and waterways. It seems likely that Trump would seek to undo water protections put in place by Biden, such as the new Lead and Copper Rule Improvements regulation, finalized last month that mandates all lead drinking water pipes be removed by 2027.

Biden’s EPA set the country’s first drinking water standards for six types of PFAS compounds last April, after determining that almost no level of exposure to the substances is safe. Project 2025 calls to “revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances.” The report promotes the notion that decision-making should be risk-based rather than precautionary, according to an analysis of the major climate and environmental impacts of Project 2025 by UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. In the view of Project 2025 authors, a pollutant could only be regulated if it was shown to cause harm, versus a policy of allowing just the chemicals that have been proven safe, known as the precautionary principle.

The document also calls to “revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies” but does not elaborate. It does, however, call to repeal the Biden administration’s waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule, which defines “navigable waters.” Project 2025 states the rule must respect private property rights and can only refer to “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” as opposed to dry channels through which water flows occasionally or occurs intermittently.

Rivers and watersheds could be threatened, according to the organization American Rivers, as Project 2025 suggests lifting the ban on fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, which would put watersheds, rivers, and streams at risk from spills, leaks, and accidents.

Project 2025 calls for the dismantling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which shapes international ocean, fisheries, climate, space and weather policies, which could leave the country vulnerable and unprepared for future hurricanes, storms, floods, or drought.

Remarkably, the Southeast was in drought even after Hurricane Helene inundated the region. Since then, there’s been more evaporation and drier soils with warmer temperatures and not much rain.

Evaporation plays a major role in drought, particularly in the U.S. West, according to a new study from UCLA and NOAA. During the exceptional drought from 2020 to 2022, the scientists found that reduced precipitation only accounted for 39 percent of its severity, but evaporation accounted for 61 percent. The evaporation was due to high temperatures caused by man-made climate change, according to the authors. That conclusion suggests that the drying, or aridification, will become more severe as the climate warms.

Western droughts have historically been caused by a lack of rain and snow, and evaporation has played a small role. Now, climate change means more water is evaporating not only from lakes and reservoirs but also from soils and plants.

The researchers explain that as the atmosphere heats it holds more water vapor, which then might condense to form precipitation. However, more heat keeps water molecules moving and bouncing off each other, preventing them from condensing.  A cycle is created in which more water will evaporate, but a smaller fraction will return as rain.

One of the authors, Rong Fu, said in a statement that even if precipitation were normal, there is not enough water to keep up with evaporation, and building bigger reservoirs won’t help because more moisture will be sucked up. The researchers said droughts will last longer, cover wider areas, and be even drier with every little bit that the planet warms.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

Two researchers, University of California, Riverside, microbiologist Michael Allen and Utah State University’s James McMahon—helicoptered to an area where the lava had turned the land into slabs of pumice and only a few plants had managed to begin anew. They set up two test plots and unleashed a few northern pocket gophers, Thomomys talpoides, and let them burrow for just one day. The theory being they would move deep soil, with its beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi, to the surface which would jumpstart plant recovery.

The results were astonishing. In the short span of 24 hours, the rodents had started a chain reaction that would transform the area. Within six years there were 40,000 plants thriving on plots where the gophers dug, while nearby untouched land remained mostly barren.

Now, in a recent study and over four decades later—the gophers’ gift keeps on giving—samples taken from the same plots indicated better soil health where gophers had worked.

The takeaway? When it comes to restoration efforts, if in doubt about the value of nature-based solutions, we should just gopher it.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes.