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China news tagged with: pollution (111)

• U.S. to Lead on Climate so China, India Follow

  

  President Obama has announced at the G-2o summit that the US will try to “lead by example” so that China and India could follow suit and lower their pollution.

  Speaking at the G20 meeting of major economies, (President Obama) used his presidential debut on the world stage to contrast his policies with those of former President George W. Bush, who had twinned U.S. action to curb climate greenhouse gases with pressure on emerging economic powerhouses.

  “China and India … justifiably chafe at the idea that they should somehow sacrifice their development for our efforts to control climate change,” Obama told a news conference at the conclusion of the London summit…”If China and India with their populations had the same energy usage as the average American then we would all have melted by now”, he said.

  Developing countries say that the developed world has earned its wealth from more than two centuries of industrialisation, spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.

  Obama’s speech at the summit:
  
  See also past CDT posts on the G-20.

  » Read more
  • April 2, 2009 2:38 PM

• China 2008: Environmental Crisis

  

  This next article in the CDT series on important issues facing China in 2008 focuses on the Environment. See also previous posts on Nationalism, the Developing World, and the Global Financial Crisis.

  China’s environmental issues have increased in scale in 2008 as the country strives to maintain its economic growth and development. In particular, air pollution has worsened rapidly between 2007-2008 after a sharp rise in 2002. China’s total carbon emissions and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are estimated to have surpassed the United States, which has been the number one carbon emitter in the world. China’s increase in emissions is due to the burning of coal to generate the needed power for development. Air pollution is costing China alone $82 billion in economic losses this year. In addition to air pollution, China suffers from desertification, water pollution, soil erosion, indoor air pollution, and e-waste.

  In particular, air pollution, water pollution, and e-waste have sickened many and even claimed the lives of Chinese citizens. Besides the urban centers in China, according to the Chinese Environmental Aspect Bulletin, the rural areas are facing a major environmental crisis as well.

  How has the Chinese government responded to the gigantic environmental crisis that the country is facing? It has begun to invest in other energy sources in addition to coal. These energy sources include hydropower which requires building dams (such as the South Tibet dam), nuclear power, wind power, solar power, and even a more innovative solution such as burning straw. The government has also initiated large scale projects, such as forest rehabilitation, a ban on the use of plastic bags, reducing car traffic in Beijing and Shanghai, the construction of an eco-city in Dongtan, and rural environmental protection. Another recent innovative solution is the “smart grid” management of the electricity and information technology infrastructure.

  The efficacy of China’s environmental effort is largely in question. While some US research institutions, such as MIT and Yale, have produced optimistic reports about China’s environmental effort, some remain skeptical about Beijing’s reporting on pollution numbers. The building of dams is met by local people’s resistance due to its damage to the ecosystem. Forest reclamation might be too late for the relentlessly encroaching desert. The Dongtan eco-city project is now stalled. Smog returned to Beijing soon after the Olympics was over, and Isabel Hilton wrote in China Dialogue that China needs to clean up after the Olympics. Greenpeace China also produced a report on Beijing’s environment before and after the Olympics. Enforcement of the ban on the use plastic bags is a struggle. Worse yet, when faced with the global economic melt-down, China is retreating its environmental effort in order to keep up its economic growth for the reason of stabilizing the society.

  What is the attitude of Chinese citizens toward the country’s environmental crisis? The Ministry of Environmental Protection surveyed citizens’ satisfaction about the country’s environmental management. More Chinese value their environment over the economy according another report. Following the Xiamen PX protest last year, another protest against the building of a chemical plant was held.

  While the environmental law needs to be tightened and codified, environmental litigation is being carried out by environmental litigators, such as Zhang Jingjing. However, grassroots environmental protection remains a relatively small force in comparison to industries’ cooperation with the government. For example, Beijing offers companies cash incentives to curb the capital’s pollution. Eco-enterprises are seizing opportunities for green investments. Big Chinese companies are joining global climate groups in reducing energy consumption.

  Due to the global impact of China’s environmental crisis, Japan and the U.S. are pressing China as well as other developing countries, such as India, to have carbon emission caps. While some voices within China also propose that China needs to assume a primary role in tackling the country’s environmental problems, the official government response pointed to rich countries to do the cleanup, during recent global climate talks.

  » Read more
  • December 5, 2008 8:58 PM

• China’s Environmental Retreat

  

  From Washington Post:

  In February, the Fuan textile factory became one of the first major casualties of China’s anti-pollution campaign when the multimillion-dollar company was shut down for dumping waste from dyes into a neighboring river and turning it red.

  But as the country’s economy began to cool this fall and job losses mounted, the company was resurrected. Encouraged by the government, Fuan changed its name, moved to a new location and quietly reopened.

  With the global economy at the edge of recession, China appears to be turning away from previous pledges to improve its record on environmental protection. In this, China is hardly alone: A climate-change proposal in Europe that a few months ago seemed like a sure thing has now divided the continent because of its anticipated expense, and worldwide, money for the development of renewable energy sources has been drying up.

  » Read more
  • November 19, 2008 4:01 AM

• Under a Sooty Exterior, A Green China Emerges

  

  An analysis in Environment 360, a publication of Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, gives an optimistic picture of China’s environmental record and efforts to go green:

  So China is not responsible for where we are today on climate change. And I doubt that either its cumulative or its its per-capita emissions will ever approach those of the U.S. Why? Because, believe it or not, China is going green.

  We hear a lot about China building a new coal-fired power station every week. I checked the stats. It’s worse. It has recently been building two new 1000-megawatt plants each week. But last year, China also built more wind turbines than any other country. And its biogas and solar power industries are also growing fast.

  China’s green credentials are surprisingly good in many respects. China has long led the world in aquaculture. By raising most of its fish in artificial ponds it has done a huge good turn for the world’s ocean fisheries.

  » Read more
  • November 13, 2008 11:18 AM

• China Report Warns of Greenhouse Gas Leap

  

  From Reuters:

  China’s greenhouse gas pollution could double or more in two decades says a new Chinese state think-tank study that casts stark light on the industrial giant’s role in stoking global warming.

  Beijing has not released recent official data on greenhouse gas from the nation’s fast-growing use of coal, oil and gas. Researchers abroad estimate that China’s carbon dioxide emissions now easily outstrip that of the United States, long the biggest emitter.

  But in a break with official reticence, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other major state-run institutes have concluded that, without dramatic counter-steps, their nation’s emissions will tower over all others’ much sooner than an earlier government forecast.

  » Read more
  • October 22, 2008 10:07 AM

• Opposition Grows against Proposed Chemical Plant in China

  

  From the International Herald Tribune:

  Residents of a Chinese city plagued by pollution are mobilizing against a proposed chemical plant that they say could harm their health, with some urging marches against the plan, which they say puts growth before the environment.

  The plant proposed for Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, on the eastern coast of China, would make paraxylene, a petrochemical also known as PX and used to make polyester. Last year, protests against a PX plant planned for another coastal city, Xiamen, led to its being shelved.

  Now Taizhou residents, dismayed at the prospect of another chemical plant in an area already crowded with them, are threatening to re-enact those protests.

  » Read more
  • October 13, 2008 6:53 PM

• China Environmental Watchdog Blacklists Polluted Cities

  
  

  Urumqi

  China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) released the “2007 Annual Nation-wide Urban Environmental Management and Regulation Report” (《2007年全國城市環境管理與綜合整治年度報告》), which blacklisted Xinjiang’s Urumqi as the most polluted city. While the report cannot be accessible online currently, the MEP made the following official statement:

  An annual urban environment assessment report has blacklisted such major Chinese cities as northwestern Xinjiang’s Urumqi and central Hubei’s industrial Huanggang for their poor environmental record.

  The report, released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection on Wednesday, said northern Inner Mongolia’s Bayannur and Ulanqab, northwestern Gansu’s Baiyin, Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi and Hubei’s Huanggang had “relatively poor” air quality.

  It also listed cities having low-level water quality. They were Hengshui and Cangzhou in northern Hebei, Linfen in northern Shanxi, Fuyang in eastern Anhui, Tongchuan in northwestern Shaanxi and Wuwei in Gansu.

  [...]The public satisfaction rate exceeded 90 percent in cities such as coastal Shandong Province’s Linyi, Dongying, Rizhao and Yantai, and the northernmost Heilongjiang Province’s Daqing and Heihe, the report said. Residents of Shanxi’s coal base Datong and southern Guangxi’s Hezhou were the least satisfied with their environment.

  With the car ban policy in Beijing and the increasing anti-pollution monitoring effort, China continues to make effort against environmental pollution.

  The report also includes a survey of public satisfaction in various cities. China Daily picks up on this interesting aspect of the report in its article “Public weighs in on environmental success”:

  It was the first time for the public satisfaction survey to be included in the Ministry of Environment Protection’s (MEP)’s annual report assessing Chinese cities’ environmental management.

  “After all, improving people’s life quality is the ultimate goal of environmental protection,” a senior MEP official told China Daily yesterday.

  However, the methodology and the metrics of the survey need to be examined, given that such a public survey has never been done before.

  » Read more
  • October 10, 2008 2:13 PM

• Beijing Air ‘Not That Bad’, Olympics Organisers Say

  

  Olympic organisers say air quality in Beijing is “not that bad”, and they say they can guarantee clearer skies for the games. From ABCNews, Australia.

  The pledge came as the city was again blanketed in a thick haze, with temperatures at the Olympic stadium in the low 30s.

  Du Shaozhong from the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau says air quality has been improving.

  The city implemented new controls a week ago to reduce the number of cars on the roads.

  Cars with odd-numbered plates can drive only on odd-numbered days.

  A number of heavy-polluting factories have also been shut down for the duration of the games.

  Yet despite the measures, the pollution index for the city has been increasing in recent days.

  Mr Du says “extreme weather” is to blame.

  » Read more
  • July 27, 2008 7:33 PM

• Cultural Devolution

  

  The New Republic looks at various efforts to slow China’s environmental degradation:

  At U.N. conferences, officials keep pushing the country to take stronger action on climate change. Europe and Japan have helped fund clean-energy projects in China, largely through the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. In the United States, it’s become common to hear politicians say that Beijing needs to be strong-armed into action. “If we do not act [on global warming],” Virginia Senator John Warner said recently, “China and India will hide behind America’s skirts of inaction and take no steps of their own.” Warner’s cap-and-trade bill, which would limit U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions, even had a provision to slap carbon tariffs on Chinese imports if the country didn’t take steps to tackle its emissions.

  These ideas aren’t without merit. But they also miss a key point: China’s central government is well aware that its blackened rivers and sunless skies are a problem, not just because they’re sparking riots and social unrest, but because out-of-control environmental degradation is imperiling the country’s economic growth. Lately, Beijing has issued a slew of bold–at least on paper–environmental regulations. But the laws are doing little good because the central government can barely enforce them in its own provinces. This structural problem will remain the key to China’s environmental dilemma, and, as countries attempt to push Beijing toward a cleaner future, they’ll discover that the capital is the least of their troubles.

  » Read more
  • July 11, 2008 8:24 PM

• Govt Targets Land Pollution to Ensure Food Security

  

  From China Daily:

  The Ministry of Environmental Protection is strengthening measures to hold polluting companies accountable for land pollution amid increasing public health hazards triggered by soil pollution. They will be held responsible for land pollution, regardless of any change in their management structure, including restructuring, merger or dissolution.

  According to the directive, “the company which inherits the debts and rights (of the polluter) should shoulder the responsibility” for providing financial assistance to restore the productivity of polluted land.

  Land pollution is an increasing concern, as it poses a threat to food security. “Land pollution has directly led to declining food quality,” Sun Tiehang, an ecologist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily.

  » Read more
  • June 22, 2008 4:31 PM

• Pollution Kills 10,000 A Year In Southern China: Study

  

  From AFP:

  At least 10,000 deaths every year in Hong Kong, Macau and neighbouring southern China are caused by the area’s worsening air pollution, according to a study released Wednesday.

  Air pollution is also responsible for 440,000 hospital bed days and 11 million doctor visits each year, the Hong Kong-based think tank Civic Exchange said in its study.

  “We estimate that there are about 10,000 deaths occurring which are attributable to daily pollution, 10,000 deaths which are potentially avoidable,” said Anthony Hedley, a professor in the department of community medicine at Hong Kong University who worked on the study.

  » Read more
  • June 11, 2008 7:14 PM

• China Reports Some Progress on Pollution

  

  From New York Times:

  After rising steeply for many years, emissions of three important pollutants began to decline last year, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection announced Thursday as part of an annual report.

  Total levels of pollution in China’s lakes, rivers and coastal waters still rose, however, as more pollutants continued to flow into them, the ministry said. And the air in many Chinese cities remained severely polluted.

  The ministry said that emissions of sulfur dioxide, mainly from coal-fired power plants and the primary cause of acid rain, declined 4.66 percent last year. The Chinese government has pursued a stringent program that requires power plants to cleanse most of the sulfur dioxide from their flue gases before they are released into the atmosphere. Environmentalists had expected the program to show success.

  » Read more
  • June 5, 2008 8:06 PM

• Lack of Public Oversight, Wealth Inequality: Worrisome Signs In 2008

  

  Written by Zhong Peizhang (钟沛璋), former Chief of the News Bureau at the Central Publicity Department of the CPC, from China Elections and Governance:

  After the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the eleventh session of the National People’s Congress opened. Both meetings focused on the topics of democracy and the people’s livelihood, and both paid great attention to improving the situation for China’s rural residents and improving the well-being of the people. As an element of political system reform, administrative reform also took a step forward. This demonstrates that China is continuing to move forward with reform, and that the tide of history is in the hearts of the people and the party.

  In its thirty years of reform and opening up, China has achieved huge successes, which have been praised by both Chinese and non-Chinese alike. There are even those outside of China that summarize China’s experience as “the Beijing Consensus,” which is praise enough to make one drunk with happiness. Open a Chinese newspaper and the “main themes” all sing the country’s praise, while other voices are rarely or never heard. Turn on the television and on each channel you can see performances that extravagantly and luxuriously sing a song of peace and prosperity as well as spectacular feats of engineering. Because of this, people cannot help but adopt the mindset of those passengers aboard the Titanic, entirely unaware that they could hit an iceberg or suffer the surprise attack of a storm. According to a study by the American Pew Research Center on the degree of optimism in seventeen countries, 76% of Chinese respondents believe that the future is bright, more than in any other country.

  » Read more
  • May 8, 2008 5:17 AM

• South China Sea Headed For Troubled Waters: Marine Experts

  

  From AFP:

  Polluted, crossed by busy shipping lanes, and disputed by many countries, the South China Sea has taken an environmental battering that threatens future food supplies, marine scientists have warned.

  In a decade the sea — at the heart of a densely populated and rapidly industrialising region — has lost 16 percent of its coral reefs and coastal mangroves and 30 percent of its sea grass, says the United Nations.

  The exploitation of its fisheries, both legal and illegal, by family boats and industrial deep sea trawlers now threatens to deplete fish stocks that millions of people rely on, a Hanoi conference heard last week.

  » Read more
  • April 12, 2008 9:29 PM

• The Chinese: from Yellow Peril to Green Peril?

  

  On spiked-online.com, London-based journalist Daniel Ben-Ami writes a lengthy and provocative essay arguing that the West is creating an image of China as a “green peril” by focusing on the country’s environmental problems and failing to see that the end (economic development) justifies the means (a polluted planet):

  The problems that China has with pollution are viewed in an excessively fearful and cautious way. The fact that China’s population is so large, and its economy is growing so fast, makes the anxiety even greater. Instinctively, the reaction is that somehow China should curb its development rather than find bold solutions to its problems. The possibility that China could become a fully industrialised and urbanised society, with living standards akin to those in the West, has become the ultimate environmentalist nightmare. Whereas China under Mao was sometimes called the ‘red peril’, and before that was sometimes referred to by Western racists as the ‘yellow peril’, contemporary China is often viewed as a ‘green peril’.

  As a consequence, the impact of economic growth is also viewed in a one-sided way. There is an over-emphasis on the problems that it can create, including pollution and inequality. Meanwhile, the immense benefits of growth in China tend to be under-stated. The fact that growth can and does lead to a better life for the mass of the population is virtually forgotten in the popular discussion. And the capacity of a growing, more prosperous society to solve the problems that are thrown up by its growth is also neglected.

  » Read more
  • March 10, 2008 11:52 AM

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