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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021 Preventing China’s plan the next to protect pandemic climate hits a snag: Coal The fuel that has powered Beijing’s rise stands in the Thomas L. Friedman way of carbon neutrality

BY CHRIS BUCKLEY

OPINION Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has pro- moted an uplifting vision for growth in- Imagine that in December 2019 coun- creasingly freed from greenhouse-gas try X had a nuclear accident — a mis- pollution, but turning that plan into ac- sile test gone awry. It resulted in a tion is already proving contentious. small nuclear explosion that sent a The big issue is coal. cloud of radioactivity around the Mr. Xi’s climate-saving ambitions are world, causing 2.66 million deaths, plus a pillar of a plan for the country’s post- trillions of dollars in health care costs pandemic ascent that was endorsed by and lost commerce that nearly trig- China’s Communist Party-controlled gered a global depression. What do you legislature this month. think we’d be talking about today? The plan is designed to steer the coun- We’d be discussing a new global try toward two signature commitments regime of nuclear weapons safety that Mr. Xi made last year. China’s emis- protocols to try to make sure it never sions of carbon dioxide would peak be- happened again. fore 2030, he said, and the country One year Well, we just had would reach net carbon neutrality be- later, the the natural world fore 2060, meaning it would emit no equivalent of such a more of the greenhouse gas than it takes world still has nuclear accident. It from the atmosphere by methods like no plan. And is widely suspected engineering or planting forests. yes, there that a pathogen in a But unusually sharp debate has risen could soon bat jumped to an- in China over how aggressively it should be another other animal to a PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREA MANTOVANI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES cut the use of coal, which has fueled its outbreak. human in China and Students receive food aid at a distribution station in Paris run by Linkee, a nationwide food bank. Half of young adults in France now have limited or uncertain access to food. industrial takeoff yet made it the world’s then hopped onto the top-polluting nation in recent decades. globalization ex- Prominent Chinese climate scientists press, causing ex- and policy advisers want stricter emis- traordinary suffering and trillions of sions limits, including virtually no new dollars in damage. And this happened coal power projects, and they foresee a after several decades of other pan- boom in solar and wind generation. demics set off by unhealthy human Young and hungry in France Powerful provinces, state companies interactions with wildlife — with bats and industry groups say China still or civets in the case of Ebola and PARIS countries face a greater crisis, with food needs to use large amounts of coal for SARS-CoV-1 and most likely chimps in insecurity in the developing world ex- electricity and industry for years to the case of H.I.V. pected to nearly double to 265 million come. As we have just hit the one-year people, according to the United Nations “There is absolutely a tension,” said mark since the World Health Organiza- Job cuts and layoffs World Food Program. Leon Clarke, a professor at the Univer- tion declared SARS-CoV-2 — the patho- In France, Europe’s second-largest sity of Maryland and a leading co-author gen that causes Covid-19 — a pan- create an alarming rise economy, half of young adults now have of a recent study on China’s options for demic, it’s appropriate to ask what in student food insecurity limited or uncertain access to food. curtailing emissions. “On the one side, smart collective action are we pursu- Nearly a quarter are routinely skipping there’s a sense that coal has driven the ing to prevent this from ever happen- BY LIZ ALDERMAN at least one meal a day, according to le economy, and you don’t want to give that ing again. Cercle des Économistes, a French eco- up. On the other hand, coal is the biggest The answer, as best as I can detect, Amandine Chéreau hurried from her nomic think tank that advises the gov- target for climate action, particularly in is nothing — at least nothing meaning- cramped student apartment in subur- ernment. the near term.” ful. ban Paris to catch a train for an hourlong President Emmanuel Macron ac- China’s environmental pressures And if you talk to wildlife veterinari- trip into the city. Her stomach rumbled knowledged a growing crisis after un- were brought to life last week as a thick ans and other conservationists, they with hunger, she said, as she headed for dergraduate and graduate students smog hung over Beijing, reflecting an will tell you that the breakout of SARS- a student-run food bank near the demonstrated in cities across France, uptick in industrial pollution. CoV-2 from an animal living in the Bastille, where she joined a snaking line where higher education is seen as a Friction over fossil fuels goes back wilderness to humans was not only with 500 young people waiting for hand- right and the government finances most years in China, and the issue is far from NOT surprising, but that a similar outs. costs. He announced a rapid relief plan, unique to that country. But China’s loom- outbreak could happen again soon. So, Ms. Chéreau, 19, a university student, including 1-euro meals daily at univer- ing choices have outsize consequences don’t throw away your leftover masks. ran out of savings in September after sity cafeterias, psychological support for greenhouse-gas levels and interna- That was my takeaway from a global the pandemic ended the babysitting and Thomas Naves, 23, a philosophy major on a scholarship at Nanterre University, said he and a review of financial aid for those tional negotiations. webinar I got to moderate a few weeks restaurant jobs she had relied on. By Oc- began seeking out food banks when his student jobs were cut. facing a “lasting and notable decline in The country’s annual carbon dioxide ago titled “Emerging Disease, Wildlife tober, she had resorted to eating one family income.” emissions are 28 percent of the global to- Trade and Consumption: The Need for meal a day, and she said she had lost 20 “Covid has created a deep and severe tal, roughly the same as the next three Robust Global Governance” and subti- pounds. year, humanitarian organizations in Eu- surging as hundreds of millions of peo- social emergency that has rapidly biggest emitters combined: the United tled “Exploring Ways to Prevent Fu- “I have no money for food,” said Ms. rope are warning of an alarming rise in ple around the world confront an inten- plunged people into hardship,” said Ju- States, the European Union and India. ture Pandemics.” It brought together Chéreau, whose father helps pay her tu- food insecurity among young people, sifying crisis over how to meet their ba- lien Meimon, president of Linkee, a na- The accumulated emissions of the some of the best experts on the inter- ition and rent, but couldn’t send more af- following a steady stream of campus sic dietary needs. As the global economy tionwide food bank that set up new serv- United States and other rich economies FRIEDMAN, PAGE 11 ter he was laid off from his job of 20 closings, job cuts and layoffs in their struggles to rebound from the worst re- ices dedicated to students who cannot across the entire industrial era, though, years in August. “It’s frightening,” she families. A growing share are facing cession since World War II, hunger is on get enough food. “Students have be- remain much bigger than China’s. The New York Times publishes opinion added, as students around her at the hunger and mounting financial and psy- the rise. come the new face of this precarious- Representatives of the coal industry from a wide range of perspectives in food bank reached for vegetables, pasta chological strain, deepening disparities In the United States, nearly one in ness,” he said. attending the national legislative ses- hopes of promoting constructive debate and milk. “And it’s all happening so fast.” for the most vulnerable populations. eight households doesn’t have enough Food insecurity among students was sion in Beijing argued that China needs about consequential questions. As the pandemic begins its second The reliance on food aid in Europe is to eat. People in already food-starved FRANCE, PAGE 5 CHINA, PAGE 8

Kazuo Ishiguro sees what the future is doing to us The weekend paper that FROM THE MAGAZINE friends, he chanted slogans demanding that the West renounce its nuclear ar- lightens the load. senal — the hope being that the East would quickly follow suit. As they made Award-winning news, opinion, lifestyle, Nobel laureate reaffirms their way past Big Ben to Hyde Park, culture and more. In one concise paper. himself as a profound holding signs and waving banners, a current of euphoria spread among the Pick up the Weekend Edition. observer of human fragility crowd. Synchronized protests were taking BY GILES HARVEY place all across Europe, and for a brief moment it seemed possible to believe On a bright, cool Saturday in late Octo- that they would actually make a differ- ber 1983, the growing prospect of ther- ence. There was just one problem, as monuclear war between the world’s two Ishiguro saw it: He worried that the superpowers drew a quarter million whole thing might be a terrible mistake. people out into the streets of central In theory, unilateral disarmament London. was a nice idea; in practice, it could Among them was a young writer backfire catastrophically. Perhaps the named Kazuo Ishiguro, who’d recently Kremlin would respond to a nuclear-free published his first novel. Ishiguro’s Europe in the way the demonstrators mother had narrowly survived the foresaw, but it wasn’t hard for Ishiguro atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945, so to imagine a less harmonious outcome. JACK DAVISON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES his presence at the march that day felt Even as he recognized their good inten- “The unstoppable advance of liberal-humanist values I’d taken for granted like a matter of personal duty. tions, he feared the marchers were suc- since childhood may have been an illusion,” said Kazuo Ishiguro. Along with a group of like-minded ISHIGURO, PAGE 2

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