I spent three days in China the week before last and have only just caught my breath. It was a year since I had been and I came away with the overwhelming message that the Chinese system has turned the questions it was asking a year ago, about economy and society, into decisions that represent a decisive shift in its development model. This is what the leaders said at the recent Party Congress; it is what is in the Five Year Plan, the 12th, just published; and it is what I heard from foreign policy leaders, academics, and businesspeople. The phrasing was different -- new chapter, new phase -- but the meaning was serious. There is a lot to take in -- from the balance between domestic consumption and exports to intriguing hints about "political restructuring" to match "economic restructuring".
On the green agenda, this has substantial implications, for China and the world. When I first went to Beijing in 2008 Premier Wen was talking about climate change standing alongside terrorism as one of the two great challenges facing the world. At Copenhagen in 2009, the skeptics seemed to have the upper hand. Now there has been a rebalancing. I think the best way to see it is the following description: that the brown tap is still on, but the green tap is being turned on too.
The 12th Five Year Plan covers the middle period of a 15 year cycle from 2005 to 2020. The aspirations are clear -- under the theme of improving the quality of growth there is new priority to responding to climate change, strengthening conservation, developing the 'circular' (recyclable, sustainable) economy, promoting ecological protection, and getting better at disaster prevention and alleviation. This produces various key targets -- for example energy intensity and emissions per unit of GDP down 16 and 17 per cent respectively over the five year period.
The actual achievements against the 11th Five Year Plan have been monitored at the Climate Policy Initiative at Tsinghua University. Transport emissions are up; intensity is pretty flat. Manufacturing emissions are up; intensity is down. Agricultural emissions are up; intensity is down. Building emissions are up; intensity down. The significance of the sectoral breakdown becomes clear when you appreciate, for example, that the new Five Year Plan envisions 10 million people a year moving into the cities. So the decisions today about energy and transport get locked in for many years to come. And the pilots of low carbon living become absolutely crucial: not least as one of the pilot areas covers 45 million people (in Chongqing).
The Chinese motivation is at least threefold. Genuine concern about climate change as it affects for example water (I was told there had been a 10 per cent fall in Beijing rainfall in 50 years). Clear view of industrial benefits from the low carbon economy (although the phrase is not popular -- low carbon development much preferred). And a wider appreciation of what resource scarcity could mean for their economy and society. So opportunity and danger are leading to aspiration; and now the system has to deliver action.
The issue for the rest of us is whether in any scenario Chinese emissions -- in absolute terms -- can peak in the early 2020s, which is essential in most of the models for keeping the global rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. It would be a brave man to bet on this. Part of the reason is that the Chinese don't see much sign of US emissions coming down, and their income per head is over ten times higher.
Rabbi Lawrence Troster: 10 Teachings on Judaism and the Environment
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution Tuesday, Mar.16, 2010, urging the Chinese Communist Party to end its decade-long campaign against Falun Gong and expressing solidarity with victims of persecution in China.
House Resolution 605 recognizes, “the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China on the 11th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party campaign to suppress the Falun Gong spiritual movement and calling for an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners.” “The Falun Gong spiritual discipline is based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance,” said Ros-Lehtinen. “Yet these innocents are brutally targeted by the Chinese regime. The stark reality which this resolution addresses gives new meaning to the phrase 'Butchers of Beijing.’”
The Governments of the World are aware of these atrocities and many more but continue to do business as usual because of corporate greed.
I did, 3.530.000 results. Then I typed in "USA water and air pollution". 26.100.000 results!
"The Chinese version of the E.P.A. has only 230 employees to monitor/regulate the polluting of 1.3 billion people and tens of thousands of corporations. (Oct. 2010 issue of Newsweek Magazine)."
Sounds like GOP's paradise.
Much of China's ground, river, lake and coastal waters are HEAVILY polluted with agribusiness, factory and mining chemicals/heavy metals. The lack of democracy in China is preventing active citizen participation in cleaning up/reporting these toxins.
The world's manufacturers have fled to Authoritarian Communist China in recent years to avoid:
-paying taxes in their home countries
-to avoid minimum wage/labor laws in their home countires
-to avoid pollution/environmental laws in their home countries
The Chinese government is making these green changes out of NECCESSITY, they are now in environmental crisis mode and spending hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars to avoid mass poisoning of China's citizens. Expect cancer rates to soar there in the coming years.
If we in the U.S. allow the American E.P.A. to continue to be undermined/defunded, we to will find ourselves in crisis mode also, filtering all our water and wearing face masks while pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into cleaning up our polluted landscape.
Type "China water and air pollution" into your search engine.
So the rest of the world can move on to sustainable green energy and leave the US at the mercy of oil prices.
In many town, with good local government leadership, we have transformed my street in a matter of two years..from one that had multiple trash cans lined up on trash day..to one where two yellow recycling bins are in front of virtually everyone's house with a city-provided garbage can (an ordinance which only allows one medium sized city-provided garbage can). The recycling is not picked up by the city-rather a private business picks the recycle bins throughout the city, and in turn the company is allowed to keep the material for free--a win win situation. This is a small example, but it is a people's initiative
Miscanthus is a grass with C4-photosynthesis. Miscanthus is capable of producing up to 60 tons of biomass per hectare every year.
Illinois researchers predicted that if just 10 percent of Illinois land mass was devoted to Miscanthus, it could provide 50 percent of Illinois electricity needs. Using Miscanthus for energy would not necessarily reduce energy costs in the short term, Illinois researchers said, but there would be significant savings in carbon dioxide production.
http://news.illinois.edu/NEWS/05/0927miscanthus.html
A better solution might be to spend money on increasing the efficiency of solar and wind energies and moving the current fleet of vehicles into electric ones (thereby reducing the overall need to burn gas/coal/biomass). Not to mention improving conservation in the general public.
That's why they speak about 10 percent of Illinois land mass.
- Using gasification (a process that converts carbonaceous materials into a synthesis gas), there's no smoke.
- Wind & solar are intermittent energy sources and today energy storage is too expensive.
In UK, output from turbines can fall to just four per cent of their maximum output in January - the coldest month of the year.
I drive a CNG Honda! It can be difficult short range and finding CNG stations is a pain however I fill up at home at a price of $0.88/gallon of gasoline equivalent!
It's funny my friends use to make fun of my traveling bomb! Now it is the preferred way for all of us to go to lunch!
What I like best and what prompted me to buy the car is I hate sending my money to people like Hugo Chavez - you know people who hate us!
Gives me a moment of satisfaction every time I drive by a gasoline station!
Furthermore, the Chinese are committed to a goal of 50 mpg for passenger cars and there is a vast resource allocation from their command economy for greening the countryside and soon the cities.
The US needs a similar effort and fast.
we must have full employment. That employment must be
productive with the result being progress toward more and better
products and services to promote the improved wellbeing of all the
people.
True leadership needs to promote and foster these goals
as it's priorities. This is a cycle that cannot be in fits and starts
of leadership failurs and infighting towards those ends.
Throughout history mankind has been plagued with unforseen
natural disasters, These had to be dealt with by readjusting to
new realities to recover and go forward.
Mankind has had to deal also with constant conflict between
different groups of leaders not for progress of humanity, but for the
sake of their own vanity. All have had to suffer for it.
There is enough to deal with, without all these disasters of our
own making. True leadership is seriously needed to reach
reach consensus on all isues for all our sake. WE do not have it.
Will we ever?
Check your history of inventions and patents - The US Govt once encouraged the patenting of foreign inventions domestically, and many German/Japanese giants today got their start from copying - Siemens, Sony to name a few.
It is useful to examine who benefited from the decades of constant anti-socialist propaganda: Wall Street. The rich. Corporations. Big investors. Who suffered? Unions. Minorities. Women. Working people. The 'Middle Class'.
When did America last experience real economic growth that wasn't just an illusion generated by the frantic gambling of Wall Street, ludicrous real estate speculation, or silly DotCom bubbles? 1973?
You're right: It was all a lie.
It is time to look beyond that lie and find a course for America and the world that doesn't end in ruin.
I would f/f if I knew how
Are they starting from scratch so they can put in a completely different type of 'green' grid and power supply?
Yeah, the Chinese are planning on a scale so huge that few people in the West can even wrap their heads around it.
China attempts to deflate its unstable property bubble
China is to spend $200bn on low-cost homes as part of a series of measures to slow the rapidly rising prices of urban houses
• Tania Branigan in Beijing
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 March 2011 19.24 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/09/china-deflate-property-bubble