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China news tagged with: global warming (208)

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Tibet Drought Worst In 30 Years: Chinese State Media

From AFP:

A drought in Tibet has intensified into the region’s worst in three decades, leaving thousands of hectares parched and killing more than 13,000 head of cattle, China’s state media said Saturday.

The report by Xinhua news agency follows a warning by China’s top weather official last month that the Himalayan region faced a growing threat of drought and floods as global warming melts its glaciers.

Drought conditions have hit five of Tibet’s six prefectures since last year, affecting 15.3 percent of the remote plateau, Xinhua said, quoting the regional drought relief and flood control headquarters.
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- June 20, 2009 2:52 AM
Video: On Thinner Ice: The Tibetan Plateau in Peril

The Asia Socety’s China Green project continues its series on the disappearing glcaiers of the Tibetan plateau with two new videos. From “On Thinner Ice: Everest’s Vanishing Glaciers”:

A quick visual tour of some of the world’s highest glaciers on the Himalayan Mountain Range and other regions on the Tibetan Plateau. With the match photography contrast, let’s trace back what these giant ice sheets looked like 80, 40 or 20 years ago and how much they have thinned down, or melted up into the air. These images document glaciers at the foot of Mt. Everest, those in eastern Qinghai Province and in Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, and also expanding lakes due to accelerated glacial meltdown and shrinking lakes thanks to a drying and desertifying trend in some areas at lower altitudes. The picture is bleak and alarming.

And from “On Thinner Ice: Disappearing Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau”:
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- June 13, 2009 10:14 AM
At Odds on Emissions, U.S., China Open Talks

From Washington Post:

Senior U.S. and Chinese officials began three days of talks here Monday in hopes of making a breakthrough on climate change, but they remain far apart on the basic issue of who is to blame for carbon emissions and should shoulder the biggest burden for reducing them.

Both countries, which together produce roughly 40 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions, have been making what they say are major efforts in recent years to reduce pollution within their borders, but each accuses the other of not doing enough.

Experts say that unless the United States and China can reach an agreement, it will be difficult to arrive at a new climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol at a meeting in Copenhagen in six months.
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- June 9, 2009 2:31 AM
China and U.S. in Cold War-like Negotiations for Truce on Emissions

From New York Times:

For months the United States and China, by far the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, have been warily circling each other in hopes of breaking a long impasse on global warming policy.

They are, as President Obama’s chief climate negotiator puts it, “the two gorillas in the room,” and if they do not reach some sort of truce, there is no chance of forging a meaningful international treaty in Copenhagen later this year to restrict emissions.

As a senior American team arrived in Beijing on Sunday for climate talks, the standoff was taking on the trappings of cold-war arms control negotiations, with gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions replacing megatons of nuclear might as a looming risk for people across the globe.
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- June 7, 2009 8:35 PM
Q&A with Reps. Pelosi and Markey (Updated with Chinese Transcript)

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chair of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee Ed Markey sat down for an exclusive Q&A with CDT during their eight-day trip to China this month. We will post a full Chinese transcript of the interview shortly.

Q&A with Reps. Pelosi and Markey in China from China Digital Times on Vimeo.

The Chinese transcript of the Q&A follows (translated by Shilin Jia):
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- June 5, 2009 3:00 AM
China Proposes Emission Limits on Richer Nations

From the Wall Street Journal:

China said developed nations must cut their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels, according to a document outlining its stance ahead of December climate talks in Copenhagen.

China is also asking rich countries to donate at least 0.5% to 1% of their annual gross domestic product to help poorer countries cope with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, it said in the document, which was posted on the Web site of the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic policy-making body that governs China’s greenhouse gas emissions policy.

International negotiators are hoping to conclude a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012, in an effort to limit the growth of global-warming greenhouse gas emissions. The 40% target represents the high end of cuts in emissions mentioned in the 2007 Bali roadmap, which stopped short of endorsing a specific target.
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- May 21, 2009 2:10 PM
China Emerges as a Leader in Cleaner Coal Technology

Despite China’s abundant use of coal which worries environmentalists around the world, the country is also at the forefront of developing cleaner coal power plants, the New York Times reports:

While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month.

Construction has stalled in the United States on a new generation of low-pollution power plants that turn coal into a gas before burning it, although Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that the Obama administration might revive one power plant of this type. But China has already approved equipment purchases for just such a power plant, to be assembled soon in a muddy field here in Tianjin.

“The steps they’ve taken are probably as fast and as serious as anywhere in power-generation history,” said Hal Harvey, president of ClimateWorks, a group in San Francisco that helps finance projects to limit global warming.
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- May 10, 2009 8:25 PM
Energy Retrofitting: The Story of Sohota

The Asia Society’s China Green project has produced a new documentary about an energy retrofitting firm. Watch it below:

China’s economic boom has fueled a flurry of real estate construction, but the growth has also exacerbated the nation’s growing energy crisis. While millions of Chinese have seen their standard of living increase, if the government fails to enforce building and energy efficiency standards, China will soon be unable to power itself as a nation. Despite some progress made between 1980 and 2000, energy intensity, a measure for the energy efficiency of a nation’s economy, has dropped dramatically.

The Chinese government has responded by setting a five-year plan to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010. The plan calls for buildings in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin to implement energy savings by about 65 percent. Despite such government support, improvement has been slow. Nevertheless, experts agree China may be on the cusp of a green building boom due to a growing number of private energy service companies (ESCOS) nationwide.

Sohota Electric, an energy savings company in Zhuhai, Guangdong is one of those firms. Twelve years ago, company President Chen Xiaogang began selling energy efficient appliances and products, though demand for them was nowhere near it is today. He remembers trying to pitch the idea of energy retrofitting to oil refineries and other state-owned enterprises. Nobody bought it. Now, a decade later, Chen’s clientele includes state television broadcaster CCTV, whose energy bill Sohota has cut by 16 percent.

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- April 24, 2009 9:36 AM
Can China Catch a Cool Breeze?

An article in The Nation takes a look at the future of wind power in China:

The global economic crisis has hit China hard. The country’s exports and Gross Domestic Product growth have dropped dramatically; over the past year tens of thousands of factories have closed, and an estimated 20 million workers have lost their jobs. Social unrest is growing, and many fear it could spin out of control. In the face of that, China must boost its internal investment and consumption. In other words, China, which exports much of its savings, must absorb more of the surplus it generates–it must stimulate its own economy. The Chinese government’s $585 billion stimulus package, announced in November and dedicated mostly to infrastructure, is an attempt to do just that. A second, equally massive intervention may be on the way soon.

At the same time, China faces an array of interconnected environmental crises. Foremost among them is air pollution caused by heavy use of coal. For the unconditioned foreigner (such as your reporter) who shows up in the leaden, acrid filth of an overcast day in Beijing or Chonqing, the physical effects can be immediate headaches, nausea and disorientation. Even much of rural China is choked by this poisonous, soot-laden air. Coal pollution is estimated to cost China at least 7 percent of its GDP annually in lost productivity. A recent Pew survey in China found that more than 70 percent of respondents said air quality was a serious problem; water quality is seen as equally dire.

Desertification and severe water shortages are beginning and will get worse as Himalayan glaciers disappear and rainfall is disrupted by climate change. Later this century, a rise in sea level is predicted to inundate many coastal cities and much of the country’s industrial base.

The mountainside sprawl, repeated in variations all over China, might work to stimulate the economy. But environmentally it will bring disaster. On the other hand, retooling the energy system–à la the windmills–could solve both problems by radically reducing the country’s carbon emissions while stimulating the economy.
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- April 16, 2009 10:02 PM
Hu Angang: A New Approach at Copenhagen (1)

For China Dialogue, economist Hu Angang presents an alternative method for determining a nation’s climate change responsibilities:

First, the binary distinction should be replaced according to the HDI, an index between 0 and 1 that ranks countries by their levels of development. I propose dividing countries into High HDI (above 0.8), Medium-high HDI (0.65 to 0.8), Medium-low HDI (0.5 to 0.65) and Low HDI (less than 0.5). The planet is thus divided into four sections.

The High HDI group contains 70 countries, with a total population of 1.6 billion. These nations would make major, non-conditional emissions cuts, as specified by the UN. Over time this group will expand. According to the Human Development Report 2005, published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), there were 57 nations in this group in 2003, with a total population of 1.21 billion, 19.2% of the global population. An increasing number of nations will become non-conditional emissions reducers.

The Medium-high HDI group (of which China is now a member) has a population of 2.44 billion, 37.41% of the world total. These nations would be second-tier emissions reducers: conditional reducers. Targets would be set according to the gap between the nation’s HDI figure and the 0.8 threshold; the smaller the distance, the greater the obligation. When the country enters the High HDI group, they become non-conditional reducers. In the case of China, the country’s HDI in 2005 was 0.777. In 2010, it will reach 0.8, and China will then become a non-conditional reducer of greenhouse-gas emissions. A UN agency to monitor the actions and achievements of these two groups should be established.

The Medium-low and Low groups would not be obliged to reduce emissions, but voluntary reductions should be encouraged where possible.
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- April 6, 2009 11:08 AM
China Minister Rejects U.S. Pollution Duty Idea

From 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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- March 19, 2009 12:30 PM
China’s Loggers Down Chainsaws in Attempt to Regrow Forests

Jonathan Watts, who is now the Guardian’s Asia environment correspondent, reports for the paper on deforestation in China. He begins the report by describing the massive tree-planting effort known as the Green Wall of China:

If the plan is completed as scheduled in 2050, trees will cover over 400m hectares or 42% of China’s landmass, creating arguably the biggest man-made carbon sponge on the planet. China overtook the US as the largest carbon emitter in 2007, although its greenhouse gas emissions per capita are still much lower.

But the mind-boggling statistics mask a calamitous decline of China’s forest quality, diminishing biodiversity and extra pressure on woodland overseas to satisfy an appetite for timber that has – until the economic crisis - grown enormously in the past 10 years.

At Yichun, a north-eastern city in Heilongjiang province close to the frozen river border with Siberia, the forests were once so dense that the area was known as the Great Northern Wilderness. But more than fifty years of unsustainable logging have taken their toll. Yichun was classified last year as one of China’s 12 “resource-depleted cities.”

The report includes a video. See also a Guardian slideshow on the Green Wall of China.
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- March 12, 2009 12:43 PM
Climate Change: Chance for US-China Cooperation

Following Hillary Clinton’s visit to China, hopes are high that the Obama administration will be able to forge cooperation with China to help solve global warming. Former National Security Council official Ken Lieberthal has called for a summit on the topic between the two countries. From AP:

Kenneth Lieberthal, a China scholar and former White House adviser, laid out a blueprint of different ways the two countries can collaborate on global warming in a report he co-authored for the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“The U.S. clearly wants to increase the level, intensity, transparency and consistency of its dialogue with China,” he told a forum at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Climate change will be an important part of that strategic dialogue.”

Earlier this month, during her first visit to China as the top U.S. diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeatedly emphasized climate change and clean energy as areas in which the two countries can focus joint efforts.

For more on this topic, see “Common Challenge, Collaborative Response: A Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change” from Asia Society.

For more on reactions to Clinton’s visit and ideas about what should be the focus of the U.S.-China relationship under Obama, see this debate hosted by the New York Times.

See also “Hillary in China: Winning Friends — But Not Influencing People” from the Huffington Post:

Secretary Clinton will no doubt be welcomed back to China in the future. The question is whether or not she is willing to step away from a crumbling paradigm of U.S.-China relations and provide the reset of the relationship that both countries desperately need to move forward, both during a time of massive economic uncertainty and beyond. The election of President Obama was about change. It is comforting to think that the “good old” U.S.-China relationship is something we can all cling to in this moment of global uncertainty. However, the failure to grasp how and why that relationship needs to change could very well create the instability we are trying to avoid.
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- February 26, 2009 3:29 PM
News and Video: U.S. and China to Focus on Environmental Cooperation

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, China exceeds the U.S. as the world’s largest energy user and leading emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. One of Hillary Clinton’s missions during her visit in Asia is to reach an agreement with China to fight together against the environmental crisis, as the New York Times reported.

An article in USA Today also reports that climate change is on the table for Clinton in China:

“The new team in Washington, D.C., is really starting to give the international community some hope in dealing with climate change challenges,” says Wu Changhua, the China director for The Climate Group, an independent advisory group. “It’s crucial for the U.S. to start to demonstrate the leadership that’s been missing for the past eight years.” U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu co-produced a study released this month that urges Washington and Beijing to collaborate on climate change. “If these two countries cannot find ways to bridge the long-standing divide on this issue, there will literally be no solution,” the report said.

The Brookings Institution carries a summary of a past event “U.S.-China Climate Change Cooperation: Overcoming Obstacles” and a transcript of chair of the Brookings board John Thornton’s speech during the event, via brookings.edu:

China and the United States have many shared interests and extensive area for cooperation on energy and climate change. China is the biggest developing country in the world. The United States is the biggest developed country with advanced technologies and the rich experience in energy efficiency and the clean energy. (Inaudible) cooperation between all two countries, energy and environmental issues will enable China to respond to energy and the climate change issues more effectively while at the same time offering enormous business opportunities and a considerable return to American investors. There has been effective cooperation between China and the United States under the mechanisms of the strategic, economic dialog, the (inaudible) Science and Technology Commission, and other climate change-related dialogs, and within the frameworks of the China-U.S. energy efficiency and the renewable energy protocol and the fossil energy protocol…

China Dialogue posted an open letter from Greenpeace to urge the two countries to “cooperate on reviving the global economy without sacrificing human health or the environment.”

Most importantly, it is the year in which the international community, meeting in Copenhagen in December, must agree on urgent and dramatic action to avert the looming climate disaster and define the path toward a more sustainable, more survivable future. Strong leadership from the US and China, acting together, is essential to reaching an agreement in Copenhagen. We are writing to respectfully urge you to demonstrate that leadership. Already, we have seen positive signs. In recent weeks, the US has developed an economic stimulus package that includes substantial investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, demonstrating that economic recovery and environmental sustainability are mutually supportive goals. At the same time, China has begun work on a new energy law that places strong emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, demonstrating that greener development is not only possible but also desirable.

In the Chinese media, Xinhua News Agency reports on the issue with confidence in the cooperation between the two countries:

Zhang Haibin noted that the governments of the two countries can establish a sustainable dialogue mechanism on energy and climate change. The United States should provide related Official Development Assistance as well as preferential treatment on loans, financing and technology transfer to China.

“At the early stage, it is important to launch some large pilot projects. The experience of successful cases can be drawn upon and introduced gradually. Both determination and patience are essential for bilateral cooperation,” he stressed.

The video clip below is a discussion about China’s growing impact on the global environment during Aspen Idea Festival 2007, between James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly National Correspondent and Orville Shell, China expert and former Dean of Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, via Youtube:

Another video carried by Youtube with the title “China’s Environmental Crisis Is Spreading” tells that about 30 percent of China’s land mass is covered by desert, and the desert is growing. See more video introduction here.

- Please also see James Fallows’ comment on this issue yesterday posting on theatlantic.com, along with an introductory video from Asia Society “A Roadmap for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change.”
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- February 21, 2009 12:02 PM
Can U.S., China Team Up on Climate, Energy?

The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog looks at prospects for cooperation between the U.S. and China on global warming issues once President-elect Obama takes office:

There’s a good chance Mr. Obama and China’s leaders could add substance to the outlines drafted under the Bush administration’s “Pacific overture.” Both have already announced big economic-stimulus packages to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into public-works and other labor-intensive projects, many related to boosting energy supplies or cutting energy waste. Mr. Obama stressed the environmental and energy benefits of his stimulus plan in a speech on Thursday and China last November.

Both Mr. Obama and leaders in Beijing have said a top priority is using energy more efficiently and advancing non-polluting technologies. China also released several recent reports laying out financial and technical means for allowing industrialized countries to help cut the climate impact from its energy use.

While members of the forming Obama administration are proscribed from discussing plans, people close to Mr. Obama’s inner circle on energy and environment told me there are, in fact, plans for prompt engagement and action between the two countries on these entwined issues.

See also “China’s environmentalist ways” fromthe San Francisco Chronicle.
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- January 10, 2009 9:57 PM