China’s state-run Global Times boasted on Monday – day seven of the COP26 climate conference in Scotland – that coal output has reached “the highest level in recent years,” so China’s vast array of carbon-spewing coal-fired power plants can “ensure energy supply security and residential heating during the winter.”

China, the world’s worst polluter by far, built three times as many coal plants as all other nations combined in 2020. When power shortages and rolling blackouts began hitting China’s industrial centers in the fall of 2021, the Chinese government ordered an “all-out” campaign to “produce as much coal as possible” from both domestic mines and foreign suppliers.