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Wenhai Lake and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Yunnan, China (photo: ChezShawna)
The biggest weakness of the Kyoto protocol for dealing with the human-created emissions that are causing the decades-long rise in global temperature is that the two biggest polluters, the US and China, refused to sign it. China wouldn’t sign it largely because the US under Bush wouldn’t sign it, and the US under Bush wouldn’t sign it because the Bush Administration wasn’t just merely in bed with big industrial polluters, but actively worked for them, being oil execs and all.
But now we have a new president, and the Waxman-Markey bill is on the verge of becoming law. Furthermore, Kyoto’s signatories are already on pace not just to meet, but to exceed by over 50%, the goals set for 2012 — and they’re doing so without a) hurting their economies or b) causing industries to flee en masse to places with no emissions standards.
Finally, the effects of pollution and human-caused climate change are being brought home to the Chinese in very real and undeniable ways. There was of course the fact that factories near Beijing had to be shut down just to get the air to the point where athletes could safely breathe it. And recently, the famed “third pole,” the Everest region of Tibet, has been found by a Chinese documentary team to be warming up so rapidly that its glaciers — the water supply for many Chinese, as they feed the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers — are rapidly disappearing.
In the meantime, the global recession has actually come to our aid, buying us an extra 21 months to get our respective acts in gear. This is in large part because China reacted to the economic slowdown by shutting down its least productive plants, which also happened to be its oldest and most polluting.
All of this taken together helps to explain why President Obama was able to get China to agree to come to Copenhagen and roll out its first-ever set of official emissions limits — an achievement that Scientific American’s David Biello suggested was as important, if not more so, than the Copenhagen summit itself.
So, what will China’s likely emissions cuts look like? They could look like this:
In September, President Hu Jintao promised a reduction in the amount of emissions measured by unit of output, a concept known as “emission intensity,” by a “notable margin.”
And while the government hasn’t publicly elaborated on what a “notable margin” would boil down to, negotiations are under way and numbers on the table, according to Wu Changhua, greater China director for the Climate Group, a U.K.-based environmental organization.
Ms. Wu said she expects that the government likely to announce a domestic carbon-intensity target before long. Over the next five years, the carbon intensity reduction may be in the range of 60% to 70%, she said, with “a medium-level ambition” for reductions of around 40% by 2020.
“If announced, that would be a huge commitment from China,” said Ms. Wu. A firm target on emissions reductions from China’s leadership would not face the same type of political wrangling that Obama faces in Congress.
That’s similar to the long-range effects aimed at by Waxman-Markey. And with China in less than a decade coming from almost nowhere to becoming the second-biggest wind-energy producer in the world by this time next year, it’s a goal they are going to work very hard to meet. Now if we can get Congress to work to meet them halfway, that will be something for which we can all be thankful.
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So, what will China’s likely emissions cuts look like?
Look Like? on most days, the air will be too dirty for anyone to be able to tell.
Maybe the Chinese have figured out that destroying the planet is bad for business.
It will look like fewer coal mine accidents with numerous fatalities, for starters.
It will also look like more wind power than coal-fired plants; while traveling in China on business, my spouse has run into developers working on more wind power plants and seen wind power on a scale we’re not yet doing here in the U.S.
Because much of the population of China does not live at what we would consider middle-class level of consumption, emission cuts may look more like a growing Chinese middle-class which consumes carbon-based fuels only at the same level seen today.
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
If we ship all of our industrial jobs to China ,we won’t have to worry about making emissions cuts./s
The preparations for the Olympics were a big wake-up call, but the Chinese could have shrugged that off if it was just that. The loss of the glaciers REALLY shook them up.
There are several things. First, Copenhagen is pretty much of a bust. Firm numbers for carbon reduction were supposed to be agreed there. This won’t happen. Second, reductions talked about in bills like Waxman-Markey are decades down the road. The bill’s reliance on cap and trade with permits largely given away and offsets, both of which can be gamed is not reassuring. Third, this is yet another case of something being better than nothing rather than an intelligently designed and executed plan. It is now all but inevitable that tipping points will be missed and significant to severe climate change effects will occur.
The biggest benefit of the rise in gas prices: A rise in shipping costs, thus making it cheaper to stay here and make stuff. In 2005, it cost around $2000 to ship a typical freight container via oceangoing vessel. Now it’s around $9000, last I looked.
That’s why Thomasville’s making furniture in the US again.
The loss of snow melt in both the Himalayas and the Rockies was in the IPCC report from something like a year ago and had to have been known considerably before that to make it into that report.
Thing is, as noted above, Kyoto has shown that a) cap-and-trade works (in fact, it works better than expected: The goal was an 8% cut by 2012, and they’re on pace to make a 13% cut by that time), and b) it works without harming the participants’ economies OR driving their businesses to places without emissions standards.
China now understands, among other things, that not having emissions standards isn’t going to get them any more business — and is in the process of costing them their two biggest and most important rivers. Three Gorges Dam won’t generate much power if the Yangtze runs dry.
Yep. by anyone who knows how to use a Google map. It’s not happening slowly.
I am of the opinion that our country will not be prosperous until we start building stuff again.
Ah, but this wasn’t just a report. This was a documentary, and it actually got shown on Chinese TV. The team filmed the deserts that had once been lush meadows, showed the destitute farmers and former herders whose livestock had all died.
A big problem for China is while the central government knows what needs to be done, until recently the separate provinces, many of which have got addicted to the rivers of gold of the last decade, have tended to resist anything that impacts their gravy train. Putting the pictures on TV is a way of getting around the mayors and other provincial leaders and going straight to the people — and thus building support to do something about it.
Which reminds me. The other night on Lehrer News Hour in a piece on warming he included a disclaimer that only part of warming is due to human activity with some through “natural processes.” Also I saw a poll on TV that indicates a drop in numbers of people who believe warming exists! Exxon is proving you can purchase anything.
Yup. That’s why getting the wind turbines built in the US is a big deal, for starters. So is keeping GM and Chrysler alive (Ford seems to be doing OK for the moment). Cash-for-clunkers was the best $3 billion spent this year for stimulus.
Who was the sponsor of the News Hour that night? I don’t watch the Republican Broadcasting Service anymore, but I seem to remember a lot of Exxon Mobile ads. Along with the ADM ads.
Hey, Big Oil had a president and a vice president for eight long years.
What’s astonishing to me was that even with Bush/Cheney actively backing Big Oil/Coal/Nukes, the wind industry still managed to take off like a rocket. Then again, considering that nuclear’s safety issues make nuke plants prohibitively expensive to insure, and that coal’s safety issues are becoming undeniable (and thus making banks unwilling to fund new coal plants even before the downturn hit), and large-scale solar’s not yet practical outside of the desert southwest, it makes sense that wind power would be about the only viable option left.
Not sure what just a report means. The IPCC report was essentially the consensus world view on the subject.
TalkingStick, I have seen that too where there has actually been a reduction in awareness about climate issues. A lot of that has to do with a few years without many, big hurricanes hitting the Gulf (OTOH the Southwest continues to burn up) and Obama set the tone putting it on the back burner to do healthcare. This would have been at least more understandable if Obama had not whittled down what little there was in his healthcare reforms and delayed their implementation 4-5 years. As it was, there will be no climate bill to take to Copenhagen, even a weak one, and so addressing climate change will be delayed as well.
I agree. It has been uplifting to see how the people are far ahead on this. And I still have hope will prevail. We are also here in Georgia (one of the major targets for the nuclear industry) starting up some solar power programs.
I didn’t notice that night but you are right their sponsors are heavily anti-environment.
Agreed. Only to add to not ignore the effectiveness of Exxon’s propaganda program.
That’s an advantage of a planned economy: It’s generally easier to get people to work towards a single goal. China had less than a gigawatt of wind power at the end of 2004; they’re now #4 in wind-power production and will be #2 by this time next year.
Many of the provincial leaders have resisted going off coal as they didn’t want to shut down their factories and powerplants and lose out on the big boom (though they weren’t contributing much to it), but since the downturn’s shut down the excess (and old, and grossly polluting) capacity anyway, this is giving the Chinese the chance to either demolish or retrofit the older physical plants, in addition to giving us all an extra 21 months in which to do it.
I’m talking about images on TV — images that can convince even illiterate people, people who couldn’t read the IPCC report even if it were accessible to them, that something needs to be done.
As I’ve already mentioned, the central leadership knows what needs to be done — it’s getting the provinical leaders on board (and willing to shut down their factories and power plants for retooling or destruction) that’s been the tough part. But several factors — the Olympics, the downturn, the success of Kyoto, and the documentary in Tibet among them — have helped the central government in making its point that emissions controls are needed.
china is totally addicted to impressing all and sundry, whether inside the country or outside it and it has made a habit of throwing out glittering numbers on all fronts at very short notice that bedazzle – i have serious problems in taking their official pronouncements at face value
Nuclear Plants will be idled more as global warming increases … it is already happening in Europe.
China’s race to Green Power is good news for us all. In the past 2 years, there have been so many advancements in Green Energy, that have raised power efficiency in Wind & Solar and the next 2-3 years will see tremendous advancements in producing Green Power.
Of course, the greatest gain will be in conservation and that is already under way, with Gov’t grants for insulation, etc.
Yep, most Chinese understand that their Food comes from Farms, so seeing desolate Farmlands will resonate throughout the land.
The same thing is happening in India … reduced agricultural output has gotten the Citizens riled up, motivating the Gov’t to push towards Green Energy.
I keep laughing whenever I hear nuke-industry propaganda about how nuclear power is making a comeback when even before the downturn, no US bank in decades has been willing to pony up the $10 billion to $18 billion (yes, billion, and that’s before the inevitable cost overruns as no nuker’s ever been built on time or under budget) it takes to build one. And the banks have been taking long hard looks at the no-longer-hidden costs of coal power as well, which means they’re not paying for those, either.
I am a huge supporter of solar power.
It is my dream to see solar panels on homes become as common as indoor plumbing or electric lights.
There would be no need to build any “clean coal ” power plants or newculer reactors and it would even be possible to shut down some of the older less efficient coal burning plants
No more snow in the himalayas,whats the abominable going to be called?
It could take 2 decades for a newculer plant to go from the initial proposal to actual completion , far too long to make an impact on warming.
.
It really has become obsolete for all the reasons you state. As a long timer opposing the industry I actually have some optimism. Of course So.Co. scammed the GA PSC into giving them a rate increase to cover the building of 2 new reactors. I guess that is just another way of creative financing.
It’s a win/win situation. We get cleaner air due to less manufacturing while China increases it’s sales of wind turbines to the US, making our energy more environmentally sound. Of course we’ll have to get more loans from China to buy their turbines, but it’s all good.
Um, decades down the road the quality of coal reserves will have degraded significantly, its expense quite a bit higher (and you can forget about what’s left of the oil reserves), and the world will be in the grip of an episode of abrupt climate change which will be very bad and getting worse.
What you’re saying is, basically, we’re doomed.
Cap-and-trade schemes provide an insufficient degree of change on abrupt climate change issues because they lock in carbon burning, rather than eliminating it. Much of the carbon “savings” of the past decade and a half has been due to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc economies. Cap-and-trade schemes are also a pretext for outsourcing businesses to “developing” nations.
Carbon taxes run the same “outsourcing” risk. Nation-states will compete to offer the lowest carbon taxes to business, the better to attract it.
What would work, at least in addressing the problem directly, would be an international agreement to “keep the grease in the ground,” to stop producing fossil fuels. Otherwise you’re just making the consumers jump through more hoops while letting the producers continue unheeded.
This solution, however, is not likely as long as the international political class regards the capitalist system as the world’s savior. Fossil fuel is a commodity, therefore not producing it incurs an “opportunity cost,” and makes it harder for the corporate leaders to present bright and sunny quarterly reports.
“Emission Intensity”
Translation required.
As I understand it, what this bit of propaganda means is that emissions will continue to increase, but not as fast.
Don’t mean to rain on the parade here, but this is what I understand.
The problem can be solved, but the oil/coal companies won’t permit it.
And they are in charge.
The Canadian Conservative government climate change deniers and action disablers ( P.M. Harper called Kyoto a “socialist plot”) trotted out the same concept as their response to this catastrophe.
Like I said, fossil fuel is a commodity, therefore not producing it incurs an “opportunity cost.” Harper is protecting the rights of the producers of Alberta’s significant reserves of oil and of tar sands.
ironically, the global economic crisis that shrub plunged the world into gave China the confidence that this pledge would be achievable. The slowdown hit low tech “iron rice bowl” industries which were the worst polluters the hardest. The central governmen moved quickly – with characteristic ruthlessness and, oddly, with broad public support, to put in place legislation that permanently prohibited any plant that either ceased or reduced production to restore that production outside of stringent new emissions regulations. In short, as jobs came back after te reduction they were required to be much greener. The preliminary data from this effort appears to have been so successful that it pushed politicos which backed the greening agenda over the top.
Why we didn’t do the same, for all the millions of jobs we lost in the crisis, I have no clue.. or I do: the
companies in question own our government.
Without wishing to piss on your bonfire or get overly technical, China could improve its emissions intensity by increasing production for the same amount of emissions, so it need not cut emissions at all. In fact, I’d be astonished if it had any plan whatsoever do so.
believe it or not, their coal fired power plants are actually, already, marginally, cleaner than ours (per kWh produced). Their high growth rate just requires so many more plants to come on line.. which leads to their increasing national carbon footprint. That’s the real problem: they feel they can achieve much better energy intensity performance than we can – hence their commitment here, but they know and we know that their overall footprint will increase, even at lower intensity. There’s nothing anyone can do about this, since no developing country, wheter India or China or Brazil – would ever agree to emissions caps that’ll lock them into poverty.
well. we will be doomed unless we break Big Coal. They will fight against any shift in US dependence on their filthy product until it’s way too late. And that’s exactly what they are doing. Higher per ton prices – as reserves are drawn down past peak coal – are in their interests, and they’d rather have those decades of extraordinary profits and bonuses for their execs than worry about how this country will be powered after it’s all gone. Pathetic.
China’s current shift toward green is only good for us if our corporations let our politicians do the right thing within our own borders.. and that verdict is still out and not looking particularly promising. And if the corps win, we are all, to use your word, doomed.