China Lies at the Crux of the Effort to Mitigate Climate Change

Here’s a great article in The Economist that covers what China is (and isn’t) doing to put an end to the world’s consumption of coal, by far the most toxic source of energy. 

From the piece: China has good reason to prioritise the climate. Some of its biggest cities, including Shanghai, lie on the coast and could be swallowed by rising seas. The arid north lacks drinking water. And extreme weather is already taking a toll. Last year deaths associated with heatwaves in China increased by 343% compared with the historical average, according to a study published by the Lancet, a medical journal.  This summer floods damaged much of China’s wheat crop.

This calls to mind the reason we have this problem in the first place: money, and the fact that each of the world’s 200+ sovereign nations is essentially on its own to prioritize, fund, and implement its own climate change mitigation strategies.