This article references how, given China’s slowing growth levels, policymakers are reducing support for renewable energy in favour of getting behind coal and other heavy industries. Additionally, the article identifies clear contradictions in China’s energy policy; whilst China remains the largest clean energy market globally (being the leading market for solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars), it also burns approximately half the world’s coal.

France is pushing the EU to introduce compulsory environmental reporting standards for European companies and apply a common definition of “green” financial products, according to finance minister Bruno Le Maire. “We are not moving quickly enough,” Mr Le Maire told the Financial Times in an interview ahead of a climate finance conference in Paris. “We are in the process of losing the carbon dioxide battle and we need to win it.”

This article includes the fact that a new UN report, entitled the Emissions Gap Report 2019, revealed China to have increased its emissions in 2018 – despite having promised in previous years to try and curb its greenhouse gas emissions.

In a break with the global trend which in which coal power is starting to decline, China added 25.5 gigawatts to its coal capacity last year. This is only the start of it, as it ignores the global pressure to rein in carbon emissions. This is due to its focus on boosting a slowing economy. Such insights is thanks to a report from Global Energy Monitor, a non-profit group that monitors coal stations.

Brussels is preparing to unveil ambitious new carbon emissions targets as the European Parliament ramps up pressure on the incoming European Commission by declaring a “climate emergency” in the EU. According to a leaked document seen by the Financial Times, incoming commission president Ursula von der Leyen will begin her term by asking EU member states to commit by next year to reduce their 2030 carbon emissions from a target of 40 per cent at present to “at least 50 per cent and towards 55 per cent”.

Doctors have stated that 35 year old actor Godfrey Gao’s sudden heart attack could’ve been brought on by intense exercise in China’s heavily polluted environment. A doctor surmised that when people do not bother to check air quality readings and go jogging outside when the air quality index is flashing a red or purple warning, "This is actually tantamount to suicide."

Dr Robin Russel-Jones writes that China’s main environmental concern is air pollution. China have no concern for climate change, as demonstrated by China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is funding 300 new coal-fired power plants in other countries. It is also building more coal-fired power stations in China itself. So China will be opening new plants faster than the EU can phase them out.

An alliance of big European companies, including Nestlé, Unilever and AB InBev, has called on Brussels to help them tackle the enormous carbon footprint of road freight by compelling EU truckmakers to mass produce zero-emission vehicles. In a letter sent on Wednesday to the European Commission’s newly installed president, Ursula von der Leyen, the companies say “the current supply [of electric trucks] in Europe is unfortunately nearly non-existent, forcing us to build our own vehicles or initiate our own pilot projects”.

Climate change is already with us. And that’s particularly clear to people like me who happen to come from Venice, which has just suffered the worst floods in half a century. If we are to reverse this trend in the context of an increasingly ragged global consensus about the need to adhere to goals set by the 2015 Paris climate accord, then Europe must take the lead.