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June 13, 2007 - China: kids and carbon

I wouldn’t want anyone to think this blog is going to be population-obsessed, but I just have to record “a major, major step forward” for bloggers seeking to influence governmental negotiating positions.

Just four weeks ago, I suggested that the Chinese government should face down George Bush’s endless complaints about China doing nothing on climate change by referring to all the billions of tonnes of CO2 not emitted into the atmosphere because of China’s one-child family policy. Four weeks on, there’s Ma Kai, head of China’s State Economic Planning Agency doing exactly that on the margins of the G8 Plus 5 Summit in Heiligendamm last week:

“Without China’s strict family planning policies, the country’s population would have increased by 138 million since 1979, resulting in an extra 330 billion tonnes in emissions.”

The exceptionally sharp-eyed amongst you will observe that my diplomatic triumph is marred by a bit of a cock-up in my calculations. I initially quoted 400 million “births averted” as a consequence of China’s one-child family policy, on the basis of previous information picked up on a visit to China – a rather large discrepancy which I’ll need to look in to! But I rather assume that Mr Kai should know.

Unfortunately, the Chinese delegation at Heiligendamm had little else to offer by way of encouraging news on climate change. The International Energy Agency forecast earlier this year that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest emitter of CO2 by the end of 2007 – emitting more than 6 billion tonnes in comparison to America’s 5.9 billion tonnes.

Simply parroting its mantra of “growth first, climate change second” will, from that point on, sound more and more ludicrous.

Posted on June 13, 2007 11:53 AM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

November 27, 2007 - China junkie

I have become a bit of a China junkie. China looms so large in today’s sustainability debates, and the challenges that it faces are so “real time, right now”, that it makes any other country’s dilemmas look small by comparison.

So to be part of two high-level presentations from Chinese scientists in one week – one on energy issues and one on water issues – has been quite a fix.

The energy stuff has become pretty familiar. One new coal-fired power station a week (though you never hear about how many power stations they are closing down), two new nuclear reactors a year (the fastest ever nuclear build programme), vast new investments in renewables (wind, PV, hydro etc) and serious efforts (at long last!) to push energy efficiency throughout the economy.

But for China, it’s water that really matters, and the situation here is seriously gloomy. 60% of China’s rivers are seriously polluted; 28% of them are judged to be “completely useless”; 20% of drinking water fails to meet minimum standards; almost every one of China’s fresh water lakes is heavily polluted by agricultural and detergent run-off, leading to massive algal blooms; 80% of discharges to sea are illegal, with huge “dead zones” stretching up and down the coast; at least 10 million hectares of land have been seriously contaminated by the run-off of toxic chemicals and heavy metals – and I could go on!

The damage to China’s economy is just massive – as was eloquently recognised by President Hu Jintao in his recent speech to the Party Congress. And there are good political reasons for trying to get on top of the water challenge: there are literally tens of thousands of civil protests every year around China, many of them relating directly to the pollution and misuse of water.

So the Chinese Government is starting to crack down on polluters (including the 250 multinational companies based in China), to charge much more realistic prices for the use of water, and to build hundreds of sewage treatment works.

Given the horrific legacy the country faces, after decades of systematic abuse of the water environment as China became the “workshop to the world”, it’s going to take decades to get it all sorted. At precisely the point when accelerating climate change is going to make it all that much harder.

Posted by JP on November 27, 2007 8:08 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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