China'S Emerging Climate Change Movement – Finding a Place to Stand

The task of engaging and cooperating with large developing countries to support their national and local climate change mitigation and adaptation actions is becoming increasingly important. China in particular – with about 9.05 billion tons of CO₂ emissions, or 28 percent of the world’s total, from fossil fuels in 2011 (Global Carbon Project 2012) the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases – has been gaining more and more attention by media, research, and the global public. The rapid increase of CO₂ emissions in China is often used as an argument in industrialized countries that there is no point in taking action, as the emissions of big emitters cancel out reductions in Western countries. This argument, however, does not hold, because China is taking action.