China Water: May 28, 2008: China's green future?

I'm not sure how much of this editorial I agree with, but let's say I am listening carefully and taking a wait and see attitude. Although my cynicism stems from a wary attitude towards China's ability and willingness to enforce its own laws, both in ecological matters and elsewhere, this piece does fit in well with the GE Press Releases.

Perhaps these highly educated gentlemen truly do know more about the situation than I do.

Peter Huston

===

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/27/ED2K10U856.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicl

Open Forum
China just might surprise the U.S. on climate change

Tony Haymet,Susan Shirk

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Opinion


.Open Forum
.Sunday Insight

The next American administration should be prepared for a China that is getting serious about the climate change issue for its own domestic reasons. Chinese experts understand that global warming will affect their country much more severely than North America.

North China already suffers from persistent drought and south China from devastating floods. These conditions pose political as well as economic and social risks. Geopolitical instability caused by global warming may well spread through the rest of south Asia. This gives the Chinese government great motivation to address the problem.

The Chinese government ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2002 after the United States withdrew from it. Last year, the government elevated the group coordinating climate change efforts to a "national leading group" directly under China's cabinet and led by Premier Wen Jiabao, a clear sign that the issue was becoming a higher priority.

China's leaders face little bottom-up pressure to take action on climate change and they believe that they have to keep the economy growing at a rate of more than 7 percent per year in order to prevent blue-collar protests. But domestic environmental problems are becoming a potential political threat to Chinese Communist Party rule. The United States cleaned up most of its local air and water pollution decades ago, but in China, pollution has gotten worse and worse, triggering widespread social unrest.

China improved energy conservation during the first two decades of its market reform and is now making a new commitment. In 2005, its government pledged that, over the next five years, it would reduce energy use by 20 percent and its main pollutants by 10 percent. With economic growth surging into double digits, they failed to meet their 4 percent annual energy efficiency targets during 2006 and 2007. But they now have forced provincial governors to sign energy efficiency contracts and threatened to fire them and withhold approval for major construction projects if they don't improve efficiency by at least 2 percent per year.

Another powerful force at work is technology transfer. Until now the dialogue about emissions-reducing technology has been framed as "the United States has it" and "China wants it for too low a price." But very soon the technology leaders, especially on price, may well be in China. China's entrepreneurs are already planning to market green technology to South America, Africa, and - yes - the United States. The deals have already begun. Before the Summer Olympics, China and Australia plan to open a small coal-fired power station capable of capturing carbon-dioxide emissions on the outskirts of Beijing.

As American carbon-capture projects such as FutureGen are delayed indefinitely by political squabbles and technology questions, who is to say that the first coal-fired plant on U.S. soil that captures some of its waste carbon dioxide will not come from overseas? (FutureGen is a $1.5 billion public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and a consortium of international energy companies to build a coal-fueled, near-zero-emissions power plant.)

Chinese experts use the word "irrelevant" in reference to America as a player in the green technology game. Hearing this term repeated during our recent visit left us with the strong impression that anyone waiting for a good price before selling such technology to China shouldn't wait too long.

China is rapidly developing its own clean energy technology and has a clear market target in the rest of the developing world. China is looking for ways to show the world that it is a responsible stakeholder, especially in the lead-up to the Summer Olympics. Beijing is perfectly capable of making a significant climate-change deal with Europe and Japan, perhaps even in time for the G-8 + 5 summit that Japan is hosting in July - leaving the United States "irrelevant" and playing catch-up.

Tony Haymet and Susan Shirk are professors of oceanography and chemistry, and China and Pacific relations, respectively, at UC San Diego. Haymet is director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Shirk is director of the UC Systemwide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and author of "China: Fragile Superpower," (Oxford University Press, 2007).