What China is doing about climate change
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published Dec 16, 2009 6:06 PM
After a barrage of propaganda emanating from Washington and the big business
media, most people in the U.S. have been led to believe that any failure to
reach an agreement at the Copenhagen summit on climate change will be
China’s fault.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, it is the U.S. and other industrialized capitalist countries,
where industry is tied to making profits, that are responsible for the
lion’s share of the pollution and greenhouse gases that are changing the
world’s climate. China and other developing countries have contributed
only a minute part of the emissions now affecting our weather.
China has four times as many people as the U.S., yet it has only in the past
year drawn even with the U.S. in terms of overall greenhouse gas emissions.
This reflects China’s rapid industrial development at a time when U.S.
industry has been shutting down, moving to other countries, and leaving workers
in what was the industrial heartland to suffer in a decaying “Rust
Belt.”
China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which mandated all industrialized
countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by
2012 — cutbacks that were to average about 5 percent below those
nations’ 1990 emission levels. While it participated in the negotiations
and got many concessions, the U.S. refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
According to a U.N. report issued Oct. 21, the U.S. now emits 17 percent more
greenhouse gases than it did in 1990.
Most important, China has a planned economy, albeit one in which there is also
a private sector. Over the past three years, the government’s five-year
plans for economic development have been integrated with very comprehensive and
detailed goals on reducing consumption of energy, pollution and greenhouse gas
emissions.
No other country has made such a strong commitment to the future.
China has built the world’s largest solar office building.
Photo: china.org.cn
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World’s biggest solar office building
China’s scientists and engineers have been mobilized to find new ways to
conserve energy and get energy from renewable sources. In fact, just weeks
before the Copenhagen summit began, the world’s largest solar energy
office building opened in Dezhou, Shangdong Province, in northwest China. The
huge building features exhibition centers, scientific research facilities,
meeting and training facilities, and a hotel.
According to china.org.cn: “Green ideas have been applied throughout the
construction. The external structure of the building used only 1 percent of the
steel used to construct the Bird’s Nest. Advanced roof and wall
insulation mean energy savings 30 percent higher than the national energy
saving standard.”
The technological advances developed for this building will now be available
for other projects.
China has become the world’s largest producer of solar panels,
outstripping Germany. It also makes the vast majority of low-energy fluorescent
bulbs sold around the world.
One of China’s biggest problems in regearing for green development is its
historical dependence on coal. According to MBendi Information Services, China
is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, and many of
China’s large coal reserves are not yet developed. It has coal reserves
of more than 114 billion tons, 13.51 percent of the world total. It is coal
that has fueled China’s industrial development.
Northern China, especially Shanxi Province, contains most of China’s
easily accessible coal and virtually all of its large state-owned mines. Many
of the smaller mines are privately owned and have a terrible safety record. The
government is now in the process of closing many of them down.
How can China continue to develop while tackling the problem of greenhouse
gases? Deborah Seligsohn, a Beijing-based energy expert with the World
Resources Institute, says China is now “an emerging leader in clean-coal
technologies. It has built more high-efficiency coal-fired power plants than
any country,” she said. (AFP, Dec. 15)
More such plants are planned to replace old and dirty furnaces in Shanxi.
It’s an example of how countries whose development was impeded by
imperialist control need to break that tie and acquire a basic industrial
infrastructure before they can move to higher, cleaner technologies.
Although U.S. politicians are bent on China-bashing to cover up the
responsibility of imperialism in bogging down a meaningful emissions agreement,
the world’s scientists are more and more disputing this assessment.
Scientists impressed by China’s actions
Science News, a weekly U.S. science magazine, in its Dec. 5 issue said,
“In diagnosing why the Kyoto Protocol fell short of its primary aim
— catalyzing serious emissions reductions by all major
industrial powers — most analysts point to the United States.
The treaty, which went into force on Feb. 16, 2005, has been ratified, accepted
or agreed to by 189 countries. The lone holdout among nations that negotiated
this accord: the United States.”
It adds that while U.S. negotiators are free to agree to an international
accord, that wouldn’t commit this country, since the Senate can nix the
deal. And Senate leaders in the past refused to ratify any agreement that
didn’t impose emissions cuts on developing countries like China, India
and Brazil.
However, China has not waited for another agreement but has acted on its own.
Science News interviewed Rob Bradley, of the World Resources Institute’s
International Climate Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C., who was very
impressed by China’s efforts.
“Three years ago, China committed itself to reducing its energy
intensity, or energy use per unit of gross domestic product, 20 percent below
2005 levels — by 2010, Bradley notes. Compared with the United States, he
adds, China also has considerably more ambitious renewable-energy goals and
fuel-efficiency standards for its vehicles. And China has also mandated major
emissions improvements by its 1,000 largest industrial operations, he says.
Together, these enterprises account for one-third of China’s primary
energy use.”
Bradley told the magazine, “If the U.S. said: ‘We’ll match
what China’s going to do,’ I’d be fairly happy with
that.”
Bradley thinks the reason China has been able to implement such a profound
change in its economic plans is that “unlike American climate policy
makers, who are usually lawyers, most of those in China were trained as
engineers or scientists.”
This begs the question, however, of why most U.S. climate policy makers are
lawyers, instead of scientists. Isn’t it because they are trained to
promote and defend the interests of the transnational corporations and banks
that own the U.S. economy lock, stock and barrel? In People’s China, even
though it now allows capitalists, this exploiting class does not have the
social weight to dictate government policy.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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