Darwin's Theories Blog

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Two Good News Items for the Climate

2021-09-23

There are a few days old but it’s nice to see them together:

  • China announces it will stop funding coal plants abroad (though not domestically), and

  • Norway bans gasoline cars in 2025, but will likely sell the last one before that.

Multiple news items are reporting that Supreme Leader Xi Jinping made the announcment in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 2021-09-21. While there is no date attached, experts quoted in that article note that China hasn’t actually been funding them at all this year, so the welcome announcement has been expected for a while. The timing of the announcement was probably driven by pressure from Western countries in the lead-up to the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow next month.

There is no announcement this time on domestic coal, where China is in the process of building hundreds of megawatts' worth of dirty coal-powered electricity.

Meanwhile in Europe, as reported by Electrek, Norway has been leading the charge to electric vehicles; as a result of the tax structure, gasoline car sales have been tanking while electric car sales keep amping up. The report ends with "the downward trend in sales for gas cars has been so consistent and steep that the last new gas car sale in Norway could happen just seven months from now, in April 2022." Hallelujah!