ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how the pursuit of social justice by those who bore the brunt of the cost of sacrificing environmental safety for rapid economic development was an arduous and gradual process that not all of those affected acquired. It examines the transition to renewable energies being made by China and Japan, starting with the latter as the ‘world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas, second largest importer of coal, and the third largest importer of oil and oil products’. China’s position on responding to climate change was made clear by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, in a speech delivered at the 19th National Congress in 2017. A report by Junguo Liu et al. uses empirically backed data to analyse China’s energy consumption. For Chinese leaders have long prioritized economic growth at the expense of the environment, with claims of an attitude of ‘pollute first, clean up later’ prevailing throughout most of the twentieth century.