China Is No Friend To Environment
Updated: 9:19am UK, Friday 27 September 2013
By Mark Stone, China Correspondent, in Beijing
China is not kind to the environment. It is far and away the world's biggest consumer of coal, burning three times as much of it than America in 2012.
These days, the country is responsible for a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions annually. The projections suggest it will get considerably worse over the coming years before peaking.
The causes are multiple. In Beijing, the most obvious pollutant is the traffic.
Since the 2007 UN climate report, two million more cars have been added to Beijing's roads.
There are now five million vehicles on the streets of the Chinese capital alone. All of them are filled with poor quality fuel, the fumes from which are spewed out into the city's air.
This year, the country has seen some of the worst air pollution on record.
On a bad day, you can smell the pollution. On a really bad day, you can taste it.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends a safe Air Quality Index (AQI) is 25. In Beijing, in January, the index hit 900.
The 2013 "airmageddon", as it became known, could mark a turning point.
China's state-run media used to insist that the smog was "fog".
These days though, they're clear about its health implications.
China's people are increasingly asking questions and wondering aloud why their government isn't doing more to improve their environment.
The government appears to be taking their concerns seriously.
New measures are in place to limit car numbers in big cities and the quality of the fuel is being improved.
China's latest five-year plan to take on its pollution problem includes a cap on coal consumption.
To date though, it has failed to meet any of its previous pollution targets.
A "carbon cap-and-trade system" is now in place in the southern industrial city of Shenzhen.
Others are planned in Chongqing, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing.
However, globally, governments have proved that implementing such measures and actually sticking to them are entirely different things.
Of course, much of the pollution may come from China, but that fact doesn't necessarily make it all China's fault.
The problem is that China is in the middle of its own industrial revolution. As long the West continues to demand its products are "Made in China" and on the cheap, we'll continue to pay the price for its pollution.
Essentially, the West has exported its own pollution to China. London's "pea-soupers" of the 1950s - a product of the UK's industrial revolution - are now being re-lived in China as it meets our demands.
And arguably, China is only adopting the same principle as the West did a century ago: the "grow first, clean up later" attitude.
But the speed at which China has industrialised has exacerbated its pollution problems.
It would be wrong though to suggest that China is doing nothing to sort out its problems and live up to its global responsibility.
It is a world leader in green technology. Chinese investment wind and solar power is second to none.
Britain, for one, recognises that. On Thursday, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey was in Beijing to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Chinese government.
The MoU, on offshore wind power, is the first of its kind that China has signed with another country.
"I am delighted that the UK and China have cemented their 'Strategic Partnership on Offshore Wind' through the signing of an MoU," Mr Davey said.
"The UK has more offshore wind installed than the rest of the world combined and we have ambitious plans for the future.
"Together with China, who plans to develop 30GW of offshore wind by 2020, we want to make offshore wind a competitive low carbon energy choice.
"Our strengthened cooperation will bring significant commercial and environmental benefits for both countries."
The broad point is this: China's impact on the global environment is so huge that a substantial shift in attitude and policy here alone could be a global game changer.
The concern is that many of China's considerable commitments to change its ways are, for now at least, on paper only; paper which, incidentally, comes from trees that China is chopping down at a frightening pace.
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