China, Coal and Green Leapfrogging | Alex Steffen
Isaac Mao
China, Coal and Green Leapfrogging | Alex Steffen
Big Systems - Global Institutions, Governance and History see all posts in this category
More on Chinese Pollution. The Times reports that coal-burning in China is killing 400,000 Chinese a year, and contributing mightily to
environmental problems around the world:
One of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.
In early April, a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul, sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the West Coast. Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis.
The coal China is burning now is of immediate concern to most of East Asia and the North American West Coast, but the coal Chinas burns over the next two decades will weigh heavily in deciding not only what kind of future we will have: it may well play a critical part in deciding what kind of lives our great-grandchildren live.
This is what makes winning the great wager in China so important. China is hell-bent on raising itself out of poverty and bringing at least its urban, industrialized communities into the ranks of the globally affluent. As the Times puts it,
One-fifth of the world's population already lives in affluent countries with lots of air-conditioning, refrigerators and other appliances. This group consumes a tremendous amount of oil, natural gas, nuclear power, coal and alternative energy sources.
Now China is trying to bring its fifth of the world's population, people like Mr. Wu and Ms. Cao, up to the same standard. One goal is to build urban communities for 300 million people over the next two decades.
This is part of what makes rapid progress on sustainable innovation so important. We need better models and systems -- better buildings, better vehicles, better urban planning; massive investment in clean energy research, energy efficiency and green chemistry; new models like product service systems, distributed power and smart metering... the list could go on and on -- we need them now, and (here's the kicker) we need to spread them across the entire planet more quickly than any other set of technological advances has ever spread.
We need to intentionally trigger a planetwide eruption of bright green leapfrogging, and, in many ways, China needs to be the epicenter, not only because a dark brown China means a ruined world, but because of the influence China has come to exert across the Global South and especially in Africa. In much of the Global South, the U.S. and E.U. lack the credibility to bring on such a push, but a China which saw such a future as not only right, but in its interest (a bright green leapfrogged China is going to have a lot of solar panels and expertise to sell), might well be able to lead the charge.
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Isaac Mao
Pollution and the Chinese Future | Alex Steffen
To Know It for the First Time – Place, Environment and Ecology see all posts in this category
Pollution and other ecological impacts of industry are sapping a tenth of the value of the entire Chinese economy:
"Environmental damage is costing the government roughly 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product, estimated Zhu Guangyao, deputy chief of the State Environmental Protection Agency. ...The conflict between protecting the environment and encouraging development is becoming more serious, [Zhu] said. A shortage of resources, a fragile ecological balance and insufficient environmental protection capacity are becoming critical problems hindering China's development."
As Pan Yue said, the Miracle will end soon, if China doesn't act quickly. Now we're seeing why cutting edge Chinese projects, like Dongtan, are getting so much support from the PRC. Those Chinese leaders who care about the future of their country realize that their choices are green, or collapse.
(Image: Ed Burtynsky, Nanjing Steel, Jiangsu Province, 2005. Used with permission.)
comments
Most interesting thing I saw in this article:
"Despite the efforts of half a million environmental officials in his
agency and other organizations, China's environmental picture is
worsening and "allows for no optimism," he said as he issued a report
that described the situation as "grave."
I looked it up, the EPA in the U.S. has 17,850 employees. China's has 500,000.
u.s. = 300,000,000 people
EPA = 17,850
hence 1 environmental employee for every 16,806 Americans.
China = 1,306,313,812
EPA = 500,000
hence 1 environmental employee for ever 2,612 Chinese.
Just interesting to see that China's environmental agency is almost 28 times bigger than the U.S. for a population only about 4 times the size of the U.S.
BTW did you guys catch the fuel effeciency law put out in 2005? Taken that transporation produces over 20% of emissions in the U.S., fuel effeciency laws at least mean as the automobiles grow in China their impact on emissions will probably be less.