As Glaciers Melt and Rivers Dry Up, Coal-Fired Power Stations Multiply
BEIJING - On a bad day - which can be hundreds in a year - the ancient city of Linfen in the northern province of Shanxi is environmental hell. Named by the World Bank last year as having the worst air quality on Earth, its 3.5 million people more often than not choke on coal dust; its soil and its rivers are covered with soot, and its Buddhas are blackened and shrouded in a toxic mist.
The cause is Linfen’s 196 iron foundries, its 153 coking plants, its unregulated coalmines, tar factories, steelworks and domestic homes, all of which burn cheap, easily accessible brown coal. 
Shanxi is the centre of China’s vast and growing coal industry, which was pinpointed yesterday by Dutch government scientists as the major culprit, along with the cement industry, in the country’s sudden surge to the top of the world’s league of greenhouse gas emitters.
In the last six years, the Chinese coal industry, with reserves put at more than 1 trillion tonnes, has doubled production to more than 1.2bn tonnes a year. The country is now building 550 coal-fired power stations - opening at the equivalent of two a week - and in the five years to 2005, electricity generation rose 150%.
But while the Chinese economy has tripled in size in a decade, it has been at the expense of carbon dioxide emissions, which were yesterday put at more than 6.2bn tonnes in 2006, compared to nearly 5.8bn tonnes for the US.
China is well aware of its impact on climate change. Its Himalayan glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate, its deserts are encroaching on cities in the north-west, and rivers are drying up as a result of temperature rises and over-exploitation. According to the Worldwatch Institute thinktank in Washington, Chinese air pollution from coal-burning cost its economy more than $63bn (£31bn) in 2004, or roughly 3% of GDP.
But China argues that even with its surging economy, it is a relatively minor villain. The carbon footprint of the average Chinese last year was only a quarter of an American, or half that of a Briton.
China’s first national plan on climate change, put together after two years of preparation by 17 government ministries, follows western countries in setting ambitious domestic targets to improve energy efficiency by 20% by 2010 and to raise the share of renewables - such as wind and hydropower - to 16% by 2020. However, more than a year into the energy plan, it is proving hard to implement. For another 10 to 20 years, the most populous country on Earth is expected to continue its supercharged growth, then to plateau for a decade or so, before making reductions.
“Compared to five years ago, the environment is much higher up the political and media agenda”, said Zou Ji, a climate change expert at Renmin university. “For most people, the concerns are local - about contaminated rivers or filthy air - rather than global, but there is a growing understanding of the economic costs of climate change. Last year, a government study forecast a 37% reduction in crop yields within the next 50 years if current trends continue.”
Mr Zou said quantitative targets were “pointless” in China, where data is unreliable. In addition, he said, China is suspicious that the EU often sets unattainable goals for short-term political ends.
“Despite its growing importance to the climate change debate, most people in China are either unaware of or uninterested in climate change. In this respect, China’s position today is similar to that of the US or Europe during the 70s, when people first started to be concerned about pollution and the destruction of ecosystems,” Mr Zou said.
“We have only just started being concerned about local environmental issues. When we become richer and richer, and feel safer and safer then people will have more time and more resources to pay attention to something not directly linked to themselves.”
Yang Ailun, climate campaigner for Greenpeace in China, said the country was slowly waking up to environmental problems, but not necessarily in terms of greenhouse gas emissions . “They are worried about the immediate causes of pollution - like river contamination - rather than global warming. Climate change seems far away,” she said. “If the government is really serious about environmental protection, then we need to change our economic structure and reduce our dependency on coal.”
Yesterday, reactions to China’s emissions were mixed. Christopher Flavin, Worldwatch Institute president, said: “The pace of energy development in China is breathtaking. No other large country has ever built an economy at this speed. This is a critical global indicator and it shows the urgency for action everywhere.
“The Chinese are not going to take a different energy trajectory unless the rest of the world does.”
John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, said: “Responsibility for China’s soaring emissions lies not just in Beijing but also in Washington, London and Tokyo. The west has moved its manufacturing base to China knowing it was vastly more polluting than Japan, Europe or the US.”
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
Greenpeace makes an important point: as the West buys more “stuff” (a lot of it needless) imported from China, it’s indirectly contributing to China’s accelerating greenhouse gas emissions.
A recent Carnegie Mellon study, for example, found that the carbon dioxide emissions created by U.S. imports rose from 12 percent of the U.S.’s total emissions in 1997 to 22 percent in 2004. You can read more about the study here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/283563/rising_us_imports_mean_more_carbon.html
Since the US,in our great wisdom, let the corperations bale out of the US without any penalties, and go of around the world to find cheap labour with no protection against environmental corruption, I see it as our fault for turning the greed monster loose on the rest of humanity . Said monster has made all members of consumer societies have 5 slaves, and we sure as hell are not gonna give up wally world and all the cheap crap we so dearly need. I think accountability is finally going to come home and bite all of us in the butt.
The sad thing is we could have had free clean energy by now had not Reagan’s first move been to shut down the alternative energy programs running outside of Golden Colo. Just think , if what we have spent on war, police actions, homeland security, and the non-accountable prodution and use of fosil fuel since say,1970, we surely could have had led the world in a much more wholesome and productive direction. Golly we could be world leaders instead of bully’s the world has come to despise not envy. Congratulations great economists you have really shown us how to lead
Oh well just a thought. Do yoiu think the dumbing down of the schools since the 60’s and the consumtion of sugar all might just tie it together??? Duh!!
Click onto this website to see what is happening in Australia and China to put an end to the use of fossil fuel and atomic power to supply our energy needs. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a turely super project.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/01/technology/towerofpower0802.biz2/
The big time capitalists that love this form of economic growth will soon have to secure their own air, food and water supply. I doubt they will want to choke to death out here with us riff raff.
Industrialists will make fortunes selling surgical masks, gas masks, air filters and later bottled air.
I found these comments of interest: “‘Compared to five years ago, the environment is much higher up the political and media agenda,’ said Zou Ji, a climate change expert at Renmin university. ‘For most people, the concerns are local - about contaminated rivers or filthy air - rather than global, but there is a growing understanding of the economic costs of climate change. Last year, a government study forecast a 37% reduction in crop yields within the next 50 years if current trends continue…. We have only just started being concerned about local environmental issues. When we become richer and richer, and feel safer and safer then people will have more time and more resources to pay attention to something not directly linked to themselves.’”
I wasn’t at the interview, but note the order of “local” and the implication(s) being made. I don’t know if the Chinese understand the enormity of the impact changing climate is going to have on their geography; Just where do they think they’re going to get the 37%+ in food imports they’ll surely need to cover the projected shortfall?
Maybe they’re betting that the warming spike will throw the climate into an opposite cooling spike as shown by paleoclimatology but over a very short period of geologic time, say 500 years, that will put them in the catbird seat as the ice sheets descend on North America and Europe.
There was a time when I personally tried to boycott Chinese goods because of their prison labor. However, I found that after awhile there were no alternative sources of much that we use. I try not to consume —period, but some goods are necessary.
Napolean said “Let China Sleep”, but Nixon had to wake them and Mao encouraged overpopulation so here we are, a billion + Chinese helping America’s superconsumers destroy the planet.
Malthus2: Same here, I believe I’m picking up American made products, such as Chicago cutlery, Craftsman, Hotpoint, Polaroid and many many others, get home and open the box and yep, made in China! Good quality, great packaging but not American. My glasses frames, my wallet, my shoes, my hats. A neighbor is restoring a 1967 Mustang, needed a radiator, made in China. A 67 Mustang! I could not believe my eye. One day we stoped at a roadside vegetable stand, the garlic was packed by a company in Calif, but the garlic was grown in China. Are we in trouble? Yep.
I think it’s too late. The escalating damage is too far reaching and invasive to be reversed in time, and obviously the Chinese hypocrites have no desire to stop their mad economic expansion. “To be rich is glorious”, but the price is ecocide, disease, famine, social chaos, and quite possibly extinction.