There’s so much to this. I think it’s easy to neglect the idea that countries, like China, that have gone through “development” processes relatively recently have simply followed a model laid out by the Western world. In many ways, they have been forced to make incredible compromises in order to keep up with the pressures of globalization and free trade.

That being said, while China has recently made commitments to reduce its own emissions, the country continues to invest in dirty energy elsewhere. I wrote about the potential impacts of that in this publication last month, but knowing and acknowledging its involvement in climate change, those actions make China’s own commitments rather hypocritical.