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China’s Green Spending Falls Short
Austin Ramzy, TIME Magazine
The good news out of China is that the People’s Republic will be spending $200 billion on cleaning up the air and water pollution that has marred its rapid economic growth. The bad news is that sum is virtually unchanged from the last budget and is unlikely to make a difference.
… the amount may well be short of what it will need to turn things around, says Wang Canfa, who heads the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, a Beijing-based NGO. For China to begin serious cleanup it needs to spend 2% to 3% of GDP on environmental protection, he says.
… “I think that’s certainly a good sign that the Chinese government is taking more concrete steps in reducing carbon emissions and trying to fulfill its promise on climate change issues,” says Wen. “They are learning and becoming more aware. They also realize the current economic development pattern is taking a heavy toll on environment.”
But, Wen adds, Beijing’s efforts are hobbled by the government’s sensitivity to reporting on the environment by journalists and the increasing number of “green” non-profits based in China. “Most environmental problems have their roots in government mismanagement and corruption by individual government officials,” he says. “Local governments are so afraid of any individual or organization that’s able to bring an issue to light.”
Local officials’ blind pursuit of economic development at the expense of the environment is considered one of the main sources of China’s pollution woes. An official effort to begin calculating a “green GDP,” which incorporates the cost of environmental damage in provincial economic growth statistics, was seen as one way to alleviate that problem. If local officials ignored the environment, it would show up in numbers that their bosses in Beijing could monitor. But this summer the drive for a “green GDP” collapsed because of the difficulty in placing a value on environmental preservation.
(28 November 2007)
Despite efforts, China still unable to wean off coal
AFP
…The Chinese government has set ambitious goals to rein in the country’s output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions.
It has pledged to make renewables around 15 percent of its energy consumption by 2020. It has also set a target of making the overall economy 20 percent more energy efficient in 2010 than it was in 2005.
Both targets have been lauded by Greenpeace and other groups but the fact remains that China will continue to remain heavily reliant on coal and other fossil fuels to power its rocketing economy.
Coal still accounts for around 70 percent of China’s primary energy consumption, and coal-fired power plants are being built at a rate of more than one a week nationwide.
Experts only a few years ago predicted that China would not overtake the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases for decades.
But amid the frenzied economic growth, that timeframe has been radically brought forward with the International Energy Agency this month forecasting that China would overtake the United States this year.
(29 November 2007)
Sarkozy to China: Grow in a clean way
Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press
China must act to protect the environment and reduce emissions linked to global warming, and it can do so without compromising economic growth, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday.
“We are not saying to China to slow down its growth. We are saying to China: Do grow, but grow in a clean way,” Sarkozy told students at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University while wrapping up a visit to China that netted billions of dollars in contracts for French businesses.
“Pollution of the air, pollution of the water, acceleration of desertification, rising water levels, all these are phenomena that China is seeing at levels never before imagined,” said Sarkozy, who has berated the U.S. for not taking the global lead on fighting global warming.
(27 November 2007)
Good advice for the Chinese. It would be more convincing if the West were following it. Yet, to his credit, French President Sarkozy seems to be trying to move France in that direction. -BA
Sarkozy calls on China to join global ‘New Deal’ on environment
AFP
French President Nicolas Sarkozy Tuesday urged China, one of the world’s major polluters, to join in a worldwide “ecological and economic New Deal” to fight global warming.
“I propose that China join a new global contract for an ecological and economic New Deal,” Sarkozy told students at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University on the third and final day of a visit to the capital.
This New Deal “must be implemented quickly, thoroughly and over a long period, cover the modes of production and energy consumption and conform to (China’s) size and might.”
(27 November 2007)
