Archive for March, 2009

China minister rejects U.S. pollution duty idea

March 19th, 2009

China opposes to US imposing tarriffs on import from China.

China minister rejects U.S. pollution duty idea
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China’s top climate change official rejected as protectionist on Wednesday a U.S. idea to put tariffs on some imports from countries that do not place a price on carbon, chiding the United States to do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday told a congressional panel that once Washington develops a system limiting carbon emissions, if other countries do not impose a cost on carbon emissions the United States will be at a disadvantage.

Chu told the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee that the tax idea was just one proposal the Obama administration should evaluate. He voiced hope that fast-growing developing countries such as China and India would take steps to reduce their emissions.

But Xie Zhenhua, head of China’s Climate Change and Coordinating Committee said, “Climate change and charging carbon taxes in imports … are two issues in two areas” and should be tackled in separate negotiating forums.

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China’s emissions a wild card as G-20 weighs global stimulus

March 13th, 2009

 

China’s emissions a wild card as G-20 weighs global stimulus

The silver lining of the global economic crisis may be a greener China this year, but the long-term forecast is less clear.

China claims it met its five-year plan’s pollution targets for the first time in 2008, as domestic energy demands dipped and global demand for Chinese manufactured goods slumped. Economists are forecasting weaker gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2009, suggesting China will reduce its sulfur dioxide and other industrial pollutants further.

For a developing economy, a lower GDP — the goods and services a country produces — generally means less emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That should be the case in coal-fired China, but a surge of government stimulus spending on energy-intensive cement and steel infrastructure could merely slow the country’s CO2 growth, some experts caution. To prevent developing nations’ GDP from turning a darker shade of brown, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others are urging the world’s 20 largest economies to coordinate a "green New Deal."

U.N. economists project China’s GDP will grow 8 percent this year, down from a seven-year low of 9 percent last year. If recessions deepen in Europe and the United States, China’s GDP could rise 7 percent this year.

"The economy is certainly slowing, but I do not expect emissions to fall, especially in light of the economic stimulus package in which China will build its way out," said John Romankiewicz, a Beijing-based analyst with New Carbon Finance.

 

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An Upside to China’s Slump: Cleaner Air

March 11th, 2009

Unexpected…

An Upside to China’s Slump: Cleaner Air

Of all the things China has sacrificed to economic growth — communist ideology, traditional architecture, guaranteed employment — the erosion of the country’s environment may have the highest cost. China’s industrial zones are wastelands of polluted soil and water; the air in major cities is often unfit to breathe, because demand for electricity by the country’s export machine have forced coal-fired power plant to work overtime, spewing particulates into the atmosphere around the clock.

This is why environmentalists can easily see an upside to China’s economic slump: cleaner air. Global recession has thrown a wrench into the country’s export machine. The government yesterday announced exports last month fell by a staggering 25.7% compared with the same month last year. Declining along with industrial production is power consumption, which skidded by 9.6% in November and 7.9% in December. Couple that with efforts to clean up the environment for the 2008 Olympics, and the country’s total level of air pollution last year was slightly lower than the year previous, according to China’s Environmental Monitoring Center. (Read how China can get its boom back.)

 

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China’s Big Recycling Market Is Sagging

March 11th, 2009

Slow economy affects China’s recycling market.

China’s Big Recycling Market Is Sagging

The collapse of the recycling business has affected people like Mr. Tian, the middlemen who buy the waste products and the factories that refashion the recyclable waste into products bound for stores and construction sites around the world. American and European waste dealers who sell to China are finding that their shipments are being refused by clients when they arrive in Asia.

The ultimate victim may be the environment, already overrun with enough trash in places to threaten people’s health, now further burdened with refuse that until recently would have been recycled.

The effect is being felt acutely in China, the world’s largest garbage importer. The United States, for example, exported 11.6 million tons of recovered paper and cardboard last year to China, up from 2.1 million tons in 2000, according to the American Forest and Paper Association.

Because Chinese consumption is far less developed than the West’s, more than 70 percent of the materials that feed the country’s recycling industry must come from abroad, said Wang Yonggang, a spokesman for the China National Resources Recycling Association.

 

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China group urges government to stick to green goals

March 9th, 2009

Friends of Nature sent a letter to urge the Chinese government not to slow down their enivronmental effort as the economy slows down.

China group urges government to stick to green goals

A Chinese environmental group on Monday urged the government not to backtrack on cleaning air and water despite the economic slowdown, asking parliament to ensure stimulus spending does not prop up pollution.

China’s abrupt economic slowing has cut pollution, but environmental advocates worry the government’s desire to bolster growth and jobs may encourage its 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus plan into laxly regulated cement, steel and coke plants and deter effective environmental scrutiny of new projects.

 

Friends of Nature, a Chinese environmental group, issued a letter to the National People’s Congress now meeting in Beijing urging delegates to ensure the stimulus spending announced late last year goes to clean projects.

 

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Down and Drought: Billions Needed to Rescue China’s Agriculture

March 8th, 2009

A summary article of the drought issue and the problem with China’s rescue measure:

Down and Drought: Billions Needed to Rescue China’s Agriculture

Parched China has not seen weather this dry in 50 years. Facing the staggering consequences of severe drought during an already perilous period of market instability, the Chinese government plans to pump an extra $18 billion into its agricultural production sector. It hopes the fortification staves off climate change induced food crisis.

The dry spell, at its measured worst from October 2008 to February 2009, left more than four million people and 2 million heads of livestock thirsting to death. China’s State Council intends to recover through anti-drought measures — implementing a unified system on drought information collection and release, offering anti-drought insurance, and encouraging local governments to design and carry out projects for water storage, diversion, water pumping and rain collection.

Environmental groups worry the extra money and announced measure may not improve the sustainability of China’s agricultural sector — which is heavily based on intensive farming and genetic engineering. “If it is used to subsidise more chemical fertilisers that would be bad,” Sze Pangcheung, Greenpeace campaign director, told the Guardian, “but it could benefit both farmers and the environment if it was used to support eco-friendly cultivation. But that would require a big paradigm shift.”

Read more here, here and here.

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Commentary: China’s “scientific development” works to counter economic downturn

March 8th, 2009

I found the following commentary from Window of China to be so different from all the articles and even official statements about the competiting effects of economic development and environmental protection. For the sake of presenting a different perspective, I want to post it on my blog. The general problems with this commentary are lack of supporting evidence and shallow treatment on the role of technology. In fact, it doesn’t really explain how technology has advanced economic and environmental development.

Commentary: China’s "scientific development" works to counter economic downturn

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) — China’s relatively fast economic growth has caught the eye of the world at a time when most of the countries are experiencing the full wrath of a raging economic slowdown.

    As some Western media questions why China works, the world’s economic experts and scholars are also wondering the same thing: What tools China has to keep its economy resilient and why it is well-positioned to weather the financial crisis?

xin 29203060510554532199446 Commentary: Chinas scientific development works to counter economic downturn

Graphics shows China 2008 GDP increased by 9% according to government work report of China on March 5, 2009. (Xinhua/Ma Yan)
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    The answer lies in the nation’s unique growth mode featuring a "scientific outlook on development."

    Over the three decades of reform and opening-up, China has evolved its own growth mode that aims to achieve development through scientific approaches based upon China’s national conditions and the international situation, analysts said.

    The essence of such a growth mode is to seek a balance between development, stability, equity and clean environment, they said.

 

 

 

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