CHINA'S ABILITY TO COMBAT GLOBAL WARMING QUESTIONED
The China POst, 6 May 2007
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news/archives/editorial/200757/108988.htm
By Karl Malakunas BANGKOK, AFP
Huge questions remain over China's commitment and ability to combat
global warming after the surging Asian power bruised and cajoled but
also charmed delegates at a UN conference, observers said.
China was one of the nations most under focus at the climate change
meeting in Bangkok that wrapped up on Friday with a message that the
world had just a few years to act if it was to avert the worst impacts
of global warming.
With carbon dioxide-spewing, coal-fired power plants generating around
70 percent of China's seemingly exponential energy needs, the world's
most populous nation is now firmly entrenched as one of Earth's most
crucial climate changers.
China is expected to overtake the United States as the world's biggest
emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause global
warming anytime from now until 2010, according to the International
Energy Agency.
Amid such forecasts, some of the delegates from 120 nations who
attended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's conference
greeted with deep dismay China's seemingly pessimistic and
obstructionist ambit at the event.
Michael Mueller, a German environment ministry official who attended
the week-long talks, said after the meeting that the Chinese delegates
had been "masters of deception and the art of interpretation".
China had sought more than 10 amendments to the draft summary of the
IPCC's report, saying it would cost more and be much harder to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions than detailed.
But the voices of dismay over China's tactics were largely silenced
after it agreed to the final report, which emphasized that the world
already had the money and technology to fend off the worst impacts of
climate change.
Green groups and the European Union hailed the report as a historic
document that showed the world had the ability to save itself from
global warming.
United Nations Environment Programme spokesman Michael Williams said
China had played a constructive role, and that their points were for
the most part based on scientific grounds that helped improve the
final report.
"Most of the interventions by China were useful," Williams told AFP.
"You could argue that some of the delegates that are most critical and
difficult towards the text are the most important to the text.
"By challenging and nitpicking and asking questions, that just
increases the chances of us getting a better text."
Beijing-based Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Li Yan, who
attended the conference as an observer, said China had appeared to be
interested in political issues at the start of the week rather than
dealing with the problem.
China initially lobbied hard to insert a clause into the report that
laid the blame on the greenhouse gas emissions in the past on rich
nations such as the United States.
"But later on the Chinese delegates became more open, more
constructive, more helpful," Li told AFP.
"The final text was improved according to the delegates' opinions,
including from China."
Li said she was optimistic that China would follow some of the options
laid out in the report, particularly the call to build up renewable
energies and increasing energy efficiency.
China has already set some targets in these fields that are relatively
close to Greenpeace's recommendations.
China has said it wants 16 percent of its energy mix to come from
renewables by 2020.
It has also set targets to slash its energy consumption per unit of
gross domestic product by 20 percent from 2006 to 2010, and to cut
emissions of key water and air pollutants by 10 percent over the same
period.
However China lowered its energy consumption per unit of gross
domestic product by just 1.2 percent last year -- against a goal of
four percent -- while pollution emission levels actually rose by two
percent.
Meanwhile, China continues to build coal-fired power plants at a rate
of more than one a week.
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
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