Flailing Mess Of Economist Article Predicts China Will Serve As Environmental Model - Someday

[hatrack]

I don't know what's a better source of comedy gold - the stumblingly contradictory nature of this entire article, or the inevitable promise that growth will solve all problems - eventually. Then again, it's the Economist, so what else should we expect?


EDIT

The “airpocalypse” injected a new urgency into local debate about the environment—and produced a green-policy frenzy a few months later. In three weeks from the middle of June, the government unveiled a series of reforms to restrict air pollution. It started the country’s first carbon market, made prosecuting environmental crimes easier and made local officials more accountable for air-quality problems in their areas. It also said China—meaning companies as well as government—would spend $275 billion over the next five years cleaning up the air. Even by Chinese standards that is serious money, equivalent to Hong Kong’s GDP or twice the size of the annual defence budget.

Is this China’s turning-point? Many environmentalists, both in the country and outside, fear it is too little, too late. A study released by America’s National Academy of Sciences in July found that air pollution in the north of China reduces life expectancy by five-and-a-half years. The rivers are filthy, the soil contaminated. The government has long known this and attempted to clean things up. Yet still the smog comes.

And there is something else in the air, less immediately damaging but with a far bigger global impact. China’s greenhouse-gas emissions were about 10% of the world’s total in 1990. Now they are nearer 30%. Since 2000 China alone has accounted for two-thirds of the global growth in carbon-dioxide emissions. This will be very hard to reverse. While America and Europe are cutting their emissions by 60m tonnes a year combined, China is increasing its own by over 500m tonnes. This makes it a unique global threat.

Nonsense, say Chinese officials. China is not responsible for the build-up of greenhouse gases. The West is. There are environmental problems, true, but China is simply following a pattern set by Britain, America and Japan: “grow first, clean up later”. China grew unusually fast but it is now cleaning up unusually fast, too. Its efforts to rein in pollution are undervalued; its investments in wind and solar power put others to shame; its carbon emissions will peak sooner than people expect. China will one day do for zero-carbon energy what it has already done for consumer electronics—put it within reach of everyone. It will not be a threat to the planet but the model for how to clean it up.

EDIT

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

[DetlefK]

1. Quote: "Dirty coal will remain China's most important fuel for the foreseeable future."

"Over the next 20 years... If China reaches the current living standards of industrial countries, the number of cars on its roads will rise tenfold."

"China can reasonably expect to increase the share of services, which are far less polluting, over the next 20 years."

Don't worry about all that pollution. They will balance it with a massive increase in the workforce of plumbers, waitresses, fashion-designers and consultants.


And:
In one section the article confesses that the local administrations simply ignore laws they don't like. In another section he explains that the government is issuing new environmental regulations and is secretly slipping them in.
Yeah. "Secretly" will do the trick.

[David__77]

2. China will serve as a leader, but not in results.

In technology and production, yes. But their ecological efforts will not keep pace with economic growth for some time. Emissions will rise, but at a slower rate. Interestingly, the only way that they can restrain environmental damage is to reinstitute greater state microeconomic control.

[phantom power]

3. I was assured by many 1990s Wired articles that China would leapfrog our mistakes...

Not so much.

[pscot]

4. Someday---we'll all be dead