The battle against global warming has received a transformational boost after China, the world’s biggest producer of carbon dioxide, proposed to set a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions for the first time.

Under the proposal China, which is responsible for a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions, would put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions from 2016, in a bid to curb what most scientists agree is the main cause of climate change.

It marks a dramatic change in China’s approach to climate change that experts say will make countries around the world more likely to agree to stringent cuts to their carbon emissions in a co-ordinated effort to tackle global warming.

[Source]

China now burns nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined — one factor contributing to the record levels of PM2.5 recorded early this year in Beijing — and has been accused in the past of being uncooperative in the global fight against climate change. Amid the new leadership’s call for “ecological progress,” the Ministry of Finance hinted in February at the imminent imposition of an emission-curbing carbon tax, though the ministry later said that, due to economic concerns, the move would have to wait until after 2013. Details about another measure towards “ecological progress” were recently unveiled: the country’s first pilot carbon-trading program will launch next month in Shenzhen. From The Guardian:

The trading scheme will cover 638 companies responsible for 38% of the city’s total emissions, the Shenzhen branch of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced on Wednesday. The scheme will eventually expand to include transportation, manufacturing and construction companies.

Shenzhen is one of seven designated areas in which the central government plans to roll out experimental carbon trading programmes before 2014.

[...]Li Yan, Greenpeace east Asia’s climate and energy campaign manager, said that the pilot programmes will inform the central government on how to motivate local authorities to adopt low-carbon policies.

[Source]

In a report covering both the possible carbon cap and the new pilot program, Think Progress underlines the global and local impact of carbon emission in China, and notes what China’s progress in carbon regulation implies for the U.S., the world’s second top carbon dioxide emitter:

The possibility of a carbon cap in China has been hailed as “potentially transformative” in the fight against climate change, as other major emitters such as the U.S. have historically cited China’s inaction on climate change as reason to avoid implementing meaningful greenhouse gas regulations. Previously, China has shied away from cuts in emissions, saying its main priority was the growth of its economy. In November 2012, the state-owned Xinhua quoted Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief negotiator to the UN climate change talks, as saying it was “unfair and unreasonable to hold China to absolute cuts in emissions at the present stage, when its per capita GDP stands at just 5,000 U.S. dollars.”

But now, China’s advancements in carbon regulation mean the U.S.’s strategy of waiting for China to act on climate change before it does is becoming less and less credible. China has already pledged to cut its carbon intensity, or emissions per unit of GDP, by 17 percent between 2011 and 2015 and 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. In February, the countryannounced it would be implementing a carbon tax, but it later clarified that it would wait until 2013 is over to introduce the program. And the country has invested substantially in renewable energy, spending $65 billion on clean energy projects in 2012, nearly twice as much as the U.S.’s $35.6 billion.

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One friend, who works for an environmental nonprofit in Beijing, advised: “I have a Sportsta mask made by Respro, a U.K. company, which has a replaceable filter, which you can replace every 2 to 3 months with regular use. However, size-wise, it’s not great for women, especially women who have smaller faces.” To function optimally, he added, “It should be a snug fit.” Ideally, I should locate a store in the U.S. that sells them, but as fallback, such high-end foreign-made gas masks are now selling briskly on Taobao.com, China’s leading e-retailer.

In addition to buying face masks, people in China who can afford them are also picking up indoor air filters. Most office workers spend 80 percent of their time indoors, but Beijing’s poorly insulated buildings can’t fully keep the smog outside. Meanwhile, in the wake of a recent scandal over China’s failure to properly regulate bottled water, I’ve also been advised to purchase equipment for filtering water at home or in hotel rooms. For all China’s success in building some kinds of modern infrastructure—airports and highways, for instance—a string of recent public-health lapses has given rise to a grim, do-it-yourself approach to pollution control and personal safety. (To be sure, there’s a limit to which anyone can truly insulate herself from the city she breathes in.)

Air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January as the capital city battled a winter “airpocalypse” that one Chinese public health expert called worse than SARS. The levels of two key air pollutants in Beijing rose by nearly 30% in the first three months of the year, and Larson also points out that China just suffered its smoggiest March in 52 years. Several recent studies have linked pollution to birth defects and premature deaths in China, and the country’s new leaders have declared “ecological progress” a priority even though bureaucratic infighting has threatened to complicate any potential solutions.

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Who are China’s environmentalists? How would you characterize today’s green advocates?

Journalists and broadcasters founded many of China’s most prominent green NGOs—after all, they witnessed the scale of the unfolding environmental crisis. China actually has a long history of civil society, which was suppressed during the Mao era. But the past 20 years have seen a flourishing of green NGOs. Now there are thousands registered, and many more unregistered. Today all sorts of people get involved in China’s environmental campaigns, from university students and middle-class urban residents protesting against the construction of polluting petrochemical factories or incinerators, to villagers in the countryside angry about pollution ruining their crops and their health.

[…] Why is public participation in environmental issues so important for China?

Without the public pressure to act responsibly, local officials will continue to chase short-term economic gains and disregard environmental concerns. A greener society needs journalists who can expose environmental problems, NGOs who can lobby for conservation measures, and lawyers who can represent communities that have been affected by pollution. That’s why citizens have been at the forefront of China’s environmental movement.

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Central Propaganda Department: Regarding concerns that the Shanghai Guoxuan New Energy project could pollute [Shanghai's] Songjiang District, the media are not to speculate, comment, or produce follow-up reports. (April 29, 2013)

中宣部：对于上海国轩新能源项目落户松江引发污染质疑一事，各媒体不炒作不评论不跟进报道。

The Songjiang government announced today that it will postpone construction of a lithium ion battery factory [zh]  after residents complained that it would pollute the neighborhood.

Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

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BMW isn’t alone. The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China says air pollution is a key challenge facing companies here, and is an underlying reason why many expatriate workers choose to leave. Soaring levels of pollution are driving expatriates out of Chinese cities, and dissuading others from coming. That is a problem for many multinationals who need to attract some of their brightest and most experienced executives to China at a time when the Chinese market is becoming central to their global success. Volkswagen AG, for instance, is managed in China by Jochem Heizmann, a member of VW’s global management board.

Over the years, Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai have become magnets for global entrepreneurs and adventurous young M.B.A. graduates seeking opportunities in China’s booming economy. Among them was Marc van der Chijs, who arrived 13 years ago and co-founded leading Chinese online video site Tudou. In March, he packed up and left Shanghai, and headed for Vancouver.

“I was looking for a place where my kids can grow up in a healthy environment,” he said.

Earlier this month, Jamil Anderlini of The Financial Times reported that foreign companies are bracing for an exodus of foreign employees this summer, when the school term ends, and one executive at a search firm told the China Daily that “air quality is absolutely the main reason” that the number of foreigners applying for teaching positions in Beijing has dwindled by more than half. The state-run Global Times conceded last week that Beijing had lost some of its appeal due to the smog-induced health issues:

Some netizens were eager to use the report to criticize. They said China was still at the stage of the industrial revolution that the West once experienced. It seems that Beijing is unable to provide both business opportunities and high living standards.

The government has promised to make greater efforts to tackle the pollution crisis. For instance, 100 billion yuan ($16 billion) is to be spent over the next three years to turn Beijing green. But still, there is no fundamental solution in the short term.

Expats aren’t the only people fleeing China’s smog-cloaked major cities, as middle-class Chinese have also started to head west in search of cleaner air. Last week, Tea Leaf Nation’s Shi Yunhan also reported that migrant workers have cited pollution levels in Beijing as a reason for moving home. Tea Leaf Nation’s Rachel Wang also noted that many Chinese – especially the wealthy and well-educated – are also leaving the country altogether:

It is not hard to understand what may have pushed this group of Chinese away from their hometowns, given recent news about pollution, food safety, quality of life, education and infrastructure in China. Even the inconvenience of carrying a Chinese passport, which makes international travel a nuisance, can drive some people to seek passports of a more convenient color.

This wave of emigration has left a bitter taste in the mouths of some who cannot leave, while others expressed understanding. Wrote one user on microblogging platform Sina Weibo, “Capital is continuously being transferred abroad, leaving a mess at home.” Another commented, “With high housing prices, skewed education and healthcare systems, and a worsening environment…even basic reproductive rights have also been taken away. With all of this, you can’t blame those who are able to do so for emigrating, they just want to find an environment that is just and suitable for living.”

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Exposure to environmental pollution, as well as changing diet and more sedentary lifestyles, are contributing factors, says Wang Ning, the center’s deputy director. Noting that the number of cancer diagnoses is rising in both rural and urban China, he told China Newsweek (no relation to the U.S.’s Newsweek) on April 7: “In the next 10 years, the cancer burden won’t be lowered—we can only hope to eventually stabilize it.” Wang’s research team estimates that by 2020 the total number of cancer deaths in China will climb from about 2.5 million to 3 million annually.

The levels of two key air pollutants in Beijing rose by nearly 30% in the first three months of the year, and Larson points out that China just suffered its smoggiest March in 52 years. Outdoor air pollution is believed to have led to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, several recent reports have firmed up the link between pollution and birth defects in China.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the effects of soil pollution have also begun to emerge, as evidenced by a new survey that showed toxic heavy metal remnants and traces of banned pesticides in soil samples across China:

Now Zhuang Guotai, head of the ecological department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said a nationwide soil survey showed the countryside had paid a heavy price for an agricultural revolution that has seen grain production almost double in the last 30 years, despite a much reduced workforce.

Soil pollution is regarded as one of China’s most serious health threats, contaminating the food chain with pesticide and fertilizer run-offs as well as toxic elements like lead, arsenic and cadmium.

The problem is believed to be responsible for the high rate of birth defects and cancer in some of China’s old industrial regions.

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The dangers of China’s environmental degradation go well beyond the country’s borders, as pollution threatens global health more than ever. Chinese leaders have argued that their country has the right to pollute, claiming that, as a developing nation, it cannot sacrifice economic growth for the sake of the environment. In reality, however, China is holding the rest of the world hostage — and undermining its own prosperity.

[…] The economic costs of pollution have been the focus of various government-backed studies in China. A recent study by the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning found that environmental damage to forests, wetlands, and grasslands shaved 3.5 percent off China’s 2012 GDP. The World Bank puts the total cost of China’s environmental degradation in the late 1990s at between 3.5 and 8 percent of GDP. China’s pollution problem is holding back its economy — and poisoning its own people and the rest of the world in the process. The international community should push China to realize that if it continues to ravage the environment, it will be unable to secure its future health and prosperity — or avoid a global disaster.

Xi Jinping signaled a shift in the balance of priorities earlier this week. From Andrew Browne and Carlos Tejada at The Wall Street Journal:

Speaking before business leaders at the Boao Forum for Asia in southern China on Monday, Mr. Xi said “it’s not impossible to grow faster,” but added, “we don’t want to grow too fast.”

“I don’t think China can sustain super-high or ultra-high-speed growth,” he said, citing the need to balance economic growth with other issues. He said China’s slowdown last year to 7.8% economic growth is “partially due to our efforts to control the speed of growth.”

[…] Speaking at a roundtable discussion with Asian and global business leaders at the Boao forum, Mr. Xi said China will sustain “relatively high” growth but will also look at fostering green development. “Realizing those goals will bring vitality and strength to China’s economy,” he said.

But at Economic Observer, Chen Yongjie of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges argued that based on projections of future energy consumption and carbon emissions, China’s economy must slow further still:

There is a chance that China’s new leaders may start to take environmental problems seriously, having even set the construction of an ecological civilization as one of its five national priorities. However in the face of the severe haze we see every day, China has to dig even deeper.

[…] China has to effectively reduce the pace of its development, aiming to keep its overall economic growth below 7 percent between now and 2014; and during its “13th Five-Year Plan” (2015-2020), growth should be kept under 6 percent.

It’s only by reducing the speed of China’s economic growth that we can reduce excessive resource extraction and curb high pollution emissions. Only by reducing the over-consumption of resources and the amount of pollution can China protect and save itself, and the world as well.

The problem is compounded by China’s heavy reliance on coal, often labeled the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. “Even if China’s economy slowed to 5% growth each year,” wrote Lily Kuo at Quartz last month, describing a Deutsche Bank report on the relationship between environment and economy, “its annual coal consumption would still rise to 6 billion tons (5.4 tonnes) by 2022, from the current 3.8 billion tons.” At chinadialogue, Greenpeace’s Li Shuo and Lauri Myllyvirta illustrated the scale of China’s coal dependence:

A quick flick through China’s energy statistics book tells us just how coal-addicted Beijing’s neighbours are. In 2011, Shandong and Hebei collectively consumed nearly 700 million tonnes of coal, making them the first and fourth biggest consumers among China’s provinces. Each burned through more coal than Germany, Europe’s largest economy, and together they exceeded India’s total coal consumption. Putting it another way, more coal is consumed within 600 kilometres of China’s capital than in the entire United States.

[…] Two pathways are unfolding in front of China’s policymakers. The path of unbridled, unsustainable GDP growth at all costs that ignores the health of its citizens, or a greener, cleaner kind of growth powered by smart investments in new energy, and guided by effective environmental policies and practices. As the nation’s renowned respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan bluntly put it on the sidelines of the parliamentary meetings last month: “When people’s health is at risk, how can we still put GDP first?”

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The pollutants — nitrous dioxide and particulate matter that is between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter, called PM 10 — appeared to have surged sharply in January, showing levels 47 percent higher than the same month last year, according to the report by Beijing News that was translated into English by The Economic Observer. The report cited as its source Chen Tian, the head of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

A third pollutant, sulfur dioxide, decreased slightly over the same three-month period.

Mr. Chen said the main reason for the increase in two pollutants was high levels of emissions. Citing Mr. Chen, the report said “the emissions created by those living and producing in the city far exceed what the environment can take.”

Air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January as the capital city battled a winter “airpocalypse” that one Chinese public health expert called worse than SARS. Several recent studies have linked pollution to birth defects and premature deaths in China, and the country’s new leaders have declared “ecological progress” a priority even though bureaucratic infighting has threatened to complicate any potential solutions.

Chris Luo of The South China Morning Post has more on Chen’s comments:

He made the remarks on Tuesday on radio after listeners asked why smog had become so bad in Beijing. Public concern about air pollution remains high in the capital after it was frequently shrouded in thick smog earlier this year.

In a document dubbed “Cleaning Air Operation Plan 2013” made public last month, Beijing authorities vowed to lower major air pollutants by 2 per cent this year. To reach this goal, the city announced 52 measures including phasing out about 180,000 vehicles with high emission levels and growing more than 58,000 acres of forest around Beijing.

Chen admitted climate and geological factors had contributed to the “relatively poor air quality”. But he said a major problem was also soaring vehicle emissions and high daily emissions in urban areas.

Phillip Bump of the Atlantic Wire has more on the implications of air pollution in Beijing and beyond:

One of the primary ways in which air pollution kills is the presence of small particles, generally released from burning fossil fuels and other industrial activity. The Lung Association explains how particulate matter kills. The particles are generally measures in two sizes: those smaller than ten microns in diameter and those smaller than 2.5 microns — far, far smaller than the width of a human hair. “Particle pollution,” the Association writes, “can be very dangerous to breathe. Breathing particle pollution may trigger illness, hospitalization and premature death, risks showing up in new studies that validate earlier research.”

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The data on which the analysis is based was first presented in the ambitious 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study, which was published in December in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The authors decided to break out numbers for specific countries and present the findings at international conferences. The China statistics were offered at a forum in Beijing on Sunday.

“We have been rolling out the India- and China-specific numbers, as they speak more directly to national leaders than regional numbers,” said Robert O’Keefe, the vice president of the Health Effects Institute, a research organization that is helping to present the study. The organization is partly financed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the global motor vehicle industry.

What the researchers called “ambient particulate matter pollution” was the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in China in 2010, behind dietary risks, high blood pressure and smoking. Air pollution ranked seventh on the worldwide list of risk factors, contributing to 3.2 million deaths in 2010.

Wong adds that premature death calculations are “politically threatening in the eyes of Chinese officials,” who have redacted related sections from previous reports. However the reports continue to add up. Several recent studies have also firmed up the link between pollution and birth defects in China.

Indeed, pollution has loomed larger as a threat to Communist Party legitimacy this year – air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January and thousands of dead pigs were found floating in rivers near Shanghai in March, prompting concerns over water pollution. An aniline spill in Shanxi province in January also caused the contamination of the water supply in a handful of cities, underscoring the growing dangers of China’s polluted rivers.

While bureaucratic infighting may complicate the government’s push to address the problem, Beijing’s government announced last week that it would spend $16 billion over three years to improve sewage disposal, garbage treatment and air quality in the capital city. Still, structural roadblocks exist that may hamper the chances for serious reform. With state-owned enterprises among China’s biggest polluters, and local governments hesitant to do anything that would threaten growth, environmental protection continues to take a backseat to profits. Citing the case of Fujian-based state-owned mining giant Zijin Mining, Reuters details China’s “losing battle” against powerful state-owned polluters:

China has the laws, but its ability to enforce them is weak, especially in the face of giant firms that pour millions into otherwise bereft local government coffers. Critics say Beijing also lacks the will to tackle the problem.

…

Like many state-owned firms, Zijin is more than just an enterprise, and has benefited from a vast state support system giving it access to cheap credit and a blind eye when it comes to pollution. Its dominance of the local economy also means that many officials think that what’s good for Zijin is generally good for the community at large.

The situation is made worse by the fact that state firms like Zijin were carved out of mining bureaus and never quite lost their role as arms of the government, maintaining old relationships and channels of communication as well as running hospitals, schools or retirement homes. For many residents seeking to complain about pollution, it is often difficult to see where the company ends and the state begins.

“The problem tends to involve the capture of the government by various interests – these problems are exacerbated when the company actually is the government,” said Alex Wang, professor at Berkeley and an expert in China’s environmental legislation.

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Beijing’s government has pledged to improve sewage disposal, garbage treatment and air quality, as well as crack down on illegal construction, the China Daily newspaper said, citing a three-year plan released on Thursday.

Beijing’s plan includes laying or upgrading 1,290 km (800 miles) of sewage pipeline, building five garbage incineration plants, setting up 47 water recycling plants and upgrading 20 sewage disposal plants, said China Daily.

Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun called on the government to allow the private sector to participate in these investments.

The government also plans to curb illegal construction and land use, and will compile a list of illegal buildings for demolition next year, Beijing Deputy Mayor Wang Wei told China Daily.

In addition to this plan, the Ministry of Environment is considering adding PM 2.5 reading to the list of binding environmental targets. The Economic Observer adds:

Zhao Penggao (赵鹏高), an official from the Department of Resource Conservation and Environmental Protection at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), in a speech to an industry conference yesterday revealed that that the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) is currently considering setting binding targets on the levels of PM2.5.

Among other things, the government set binding targets on the minimum amount of land to be set aside for farming, carbon intensity and the energy-intensity of GDP growth as part of the country’s 12th Five Year Guidelines.

Zhao also said that he believed that the government will put more effort into environmental protection and that there will be more space for the development of the environmental protection industry.

“As pollution is so serious, if we don’t do something about it, the public won’t agree and heaven won’t accept it” said Zhao.

This plan comes amid the pulling of around 1000 dead ducks from Nanhe River in Sichuan Province and over 10,000 dead pigs from a river near Shanghai. The cost of environmental degradation in China reached about $230 billion in 2010. From The New York Times:

The statistic came from a study by the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, which is part of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

The figure of $230 billion, or 1.54 trillion renminbi, is based on costs arising from pollution and damage to the ecosystem, the price that China is paying for its rapid industrialization.

“This cuts to the heart of China’s economic challenge: how to transform from the explosive growth of the past 30 years to the sustainable growth of the next 30 years,” said Alistair Thornton, a China economist at the research firm IHS Global Insight. “Digging a hole and filling it back in again gives you G.D.P. growth. It doesn’t give you economic value. A lot of the activity in China over the last few years has been digging holes to fill them back in again — anything from bailing out failing solar companies to ignoring the ‘externalities’ of economic growth.”

And the costs could be even higher than the ministry’s estimate, he said. The $230 billion figure is incomplete because the researchers did not have a full set of data. Making such calculations is “notoriously difficult,” Mr. Thornton said.

Meanwhile, Chinese state media report the Beijing municipal party secretary said officials who perform inadequately in environmental protection will be disciplined. The Global Times reports:

Guo Jinlong, secretary of the Beijing Committee of the Communist Party of China, said at a press conference Thursday that the government will include environment protection as an index to assess officials’ performance, according to the Beijing Evening News.

“We should build sound systems for environmental protection. Those officials who perform poorly and passively in their job will be held accountable,” said Guo during the conference.

Zhang Kai, a campaigner with Greenpeace, said that establishing a disciplinary system of punishment should be based on the setting up of appropriate environment protection goals.

Zhang said that it is better for government to include third-party environmental protection experts and conduct regional cooperation in setting the city’s environmental protection goals.

Read more about pollution in China, via CDT.

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“I felt lost in the big city because I didn’t know what was the purpose of life and I felt confused and I felt depression sometimes,” Jia says. “It felt so boring. The job was boring. Life was boring. Everything was boring.”

[…] These days, geese and ducks splashing in a frigid mountain lake wake Jia up each morning. She has breakfast, then she hikes for half an hour along a Himalayan mountain trail to work. She passes by crimson-robed monks chanting morning prayers at the local Buddhist monastery before arriving to the boutique hotel she manages here in a Tibetan part of Western China.

[…] Zhang and his wife lived in Beijing when their daughter was born. He says the horrendous water and air pollution there was the final straw.

“We were really worried about the pollution’s impact on our baby,” says Zhang, “Right before we left, we took our daughter to the doctor for tests. Because of all the pollution, she had five times the permissible amount of lead in her blood. We were terrified.”

A report by Christina Larson at Bloomberg Businessweek (via CDT) describes significant health risks to children in urban and otherwise industrialized areas, focusing on increased rates of birth defects.

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Tong Zhu, now a Princeton Global Scholar, together with research partners at Peking University Health Science Center and the University of Texas at Austin, recently published results of a 10-year investigation of severe birth defects in one of China’s most polluted regions: coal-rich and coal-darkened Shanxi province. Specifically, the team was investigating the alarming frequency of congenital neural tube defects, in which portions of an infant’s brain, skull, or spine are missing or do not connect properly. Most babies born with this condition live only a few weeks.

In the U.S., for every 10,000 live births, there are 7.5 infants with neural tube defects. In Shanxi province, that number is 18 times higher: 140 infants. “We wanted to understand what’s really behind the problem,” says Tong, who previously worked at Peking University in Beijing. “We wanted to find out what chemicals caused this.”

Over a 10-year period, the researchers gathered placentas from 80 stillborn or newborn infants in Shanxi with the disorder. Based on their analysis, they confirmed that those infants had been exposed in utero to significant levels of pesticides, industrial solvents, and especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are released into the air when fossil fuels are burned. In Shanxi, abundant coal is used for power plants as well as for home cooking and heating. “We found higher concentrations [of the chemicals] in the placentas of infants with the birth defects” than in other infants, explains Tong, who says there is a “clear association” between the environment the mother is exposed to and birth outcomes. Their findings (pdf)appeared in the Aug. 2, 2011, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

See more on pollution via CDT, including how bureaucratic infighting is complicating the government’s ability to form policy to tackle the problem.

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What the leaders neglect to say is that infighting within the government bureaucracy is one of the biggest obstacles to enacting stronger environmental policies. Even as some officials push for tighter restrictions on pollutants, state-owned enterprises — especially China’s oil and power companies — have been putting profits ahead of health in working to outflank new rules, according to government data and interviews with people involved in policy negotiations.

For instance, even though trucks and buses crisscrossing China are far worse for the environment than any other vehicles, the oil companies have delayed for years an improvement in the diesel fuel those vehicles burn. As a result, the sulfur levels of diesel in China are at least 23 times that of the United States. As for power companies, the three biggest ones in the country are all repeat violators of government restrictions on emissions from coal-burning plants; offending power plants are found across the country, from Inner Mongolia to the southwest metropolis of Chongqing.

The state-owned enterprises are given critical roles in policy-making on environmental standards. The committees that determine fuel standards, for example, are housed in the buildings of an oil company. Whether the enterprises can be forced to follow, rather than impede, environmental restrictions will be a critical test of the commitment of Mr. Li and Xi Jinping, the new party chief and president, to curbing the influence of vested interests in the economy.[...]

Also see CDT coverage of record levels of air pollution in Beijing this past winter, the 16,000+ dead pig carcasses found floating in rivers near Shanghai, or other examples of China’s environmental woes.

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When the new leadership’s ministerial appointments were announced last weekend, Zhou retained his post, to the disappointment of those concerned about the environment. The public questioned why a minister with no achievements should remain in power.

When, on March 16, almost 3,000 representatives to the National People’s Congress voted on 25 ministerial appointments, Zhou received the lowest number of supporting votes, showing the level of discontent with his work.

The news was also met with catcalls from the public. Musician Zhao Tianming asked on his microblog if anyone knew what the minister’s achievements were. The vast majority of the 4,000-odd netizens who forwarded and commented on his message did not. One asked if the fact that one river was full of pigs and others had dried up; and the towns covered in smog and millions suffering from dust-related lung diseases could be classed as ministerial feats.

Liu does credit new premier Li Keqiang with some encouraging rhetoric and past achievements. But a campaigner quoted by Jonathan Kaiman at The Guardian argued that, in any case, the problem does not lie at the top of the political pyramid:

Ma Tianjie, the head of toxics campaign at Greenpeace East Asia, said that despite the lack of concrete anti-pollution action at the congress, bold environmental legislation may yet emerge over the next five years as new leaders acclimate to their roles and cement their alliances.

“Because they’re changing a lot of positions at the top, they have been a bit cautious in revealing their agenda,” he said. “The problem is not that the top doesn’t get it – they have got it for a while now. The problem is with lower level authorities, whether they can translate that kind of top-level consciousness to actual actions on the ground.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environment, environmental policy, environmental protection, greenpeace, Li Keqiang, National People's Congress, Pan Yue, pollution
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China’s myriad plans to deal with pollution don’t look so promising. In a research note today, Deutsche Bank analysts gloomily conclude that, barring extreme reforms, Chinese coal consumption and increased car ownership will push pollution levels 70% higher by 2025.

Even if China’s economy slowed to 5% growth each year, its annual coal consumption would still rise to 6 billion tons (5.4 tonnes) by 2022, from the current 3.8 billion tons. Car ownership is expected to increase over the years to 400 million in 2030 from the current 90 million.

[...] For China to meet its goal of reducing particulate matter to 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2030, China will need to implement aggressive measures, the bank says, like reducing pollutants from coal-fired plants, cutting the number of cars on the road, and massively building up public transportation. Even then, the air pollution level would still above the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization (25 micrograms per cubic meter).

Brad Plumer at The Washington Post looks to the United Kingdom in the 1950s as China’s precedent:

In particular, they argue that the United Kingdom went through an analogous structural shift in the 1950s after the “Great Smog” in London that killed 12,000 people. Britain had a similarly coal-dependent economy back then, but it managed to diversify its energy supply and clean up pollution without hurting growth:

So there’s precedent, albeit on a smaller scale. The big hurdles for China aren’t economic or technological, the authors say. They’re political. Until now, China’s policies to rein in pollution have largely been “piecemeal and uncoordinated.” That will have to change.

Not everyone’s completely convinced it will be so easy. Over at FT Alphaville, Kate Mackenzie is wary of the comparison with the United Kingdom. “I’d very much like this to be correct,” she notes, “but I fear that Deutsche’s projections are a little too reliant on China emerging from its present dependence on capital intensive growth and manufacturing, becoming a more advanced, services-based economy.”

At the same time, people are disappointed with the incompetence of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP). From Liu Jianqiang at ChinaDialogue:

In the first five years, there was no MEP, merely its predecessor the State Environmental Protection Agency. Despite its lowly status, SEPA had the courage to act, which was encouraging. But after promotion to ministerial status brought greater powers and boosted career prospects for its employees, there was little action of note.

Among SEPA’s actions were its “environmental storms” – its strikes against law-breaking companies, including the huge electricity giants. It also ordered regional planning restrictions, preventing law-breaking local governments from approving new projects until changes were made. It called a halt to an illegal project at the Old Summer Palace lake and held public hearings on the case, making it a case study for public participation and democratic decision-making. And it researched regulations on regional environmental impact assessments and a green GDP measure designed to solve over-reliance on financial GDP measures.

[...] But in the following five years there was virtually no sign of similar proactive measures. Instead, we saw half a decade of widespread disputes and protests over environmental interests. In 2011, the number ofenvironmental protests increased 120%. Last year brought demonstrations in Ningbo, Shifang and Qidong.

Large projects that ignore environmental and social impacts, as well as the public’s right to participate, are the root of social unrest. But the MEP seems to consider this none of its business. The public’s right to know and participate are key to resolving conflict. If the MEP had, over the last five years, enforced its rules on disclosure of information and public participation, some of these conflicts would have been avoided.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, Beijing environment, coal industry, coal power, environmental protests, environmental regulation, industrial pollution, Ministry of Environmental Protection, pollution
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