REMEMBER鈥攜ou read it here first. China is in the process of saving the
world from climatic cataclysm.
I have lost count of the number of articles I鈥檝e read predicting that China鈥檚
pollution from its foul satanic coal-burning power stations could nullify all
efforts by Western nations to reduce their own emissions of greenhouse
gases. The sums are easy to do. China contains a fifth of the world鈥檚 population
and an even greater proportion of its coal. The country鈥檚 emissions of carbon
dioxide are already the world鈥檚 second largest, after the US. Moreover, those
emissions doubled in the past 14 years as China鈥檚 economy entered a long boom
that has survived the Asian recession.
Project that trend into the future, and China alone will exceed current
global emissions by 2040. It doesn鈥檛 bear thinking about. But we should think
about it because a more detailed investigation of the figures is enough to slay
the myth of the Chinese carbon dragon. Viewed another way, China is a stunning
success story of how poor countries can begin to tackle their emissions of
greenhouse gases.
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A new study for the UN Development Programme in New York has found that since
1980, China has made extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency at its
power stations and factories. The UNDP鈥檚 investigator, Zhong Xiang Zhang of the
economics faculty of the University of Groningen, says that 鈥淐hina has cut its
energy consumption per unit of output in half since 1980. Without these efforts,
its CO2 emissions would be 50 per cent higher today than they are.鈥�
US investigators agree. Jonathan Sinton of the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in California reported recently in Energy Policy (vol 26, p
813) that 鈥淐hina is one of the few countries at a relatively early state of
industrialisation in which energy demand has consistently and over many years
grown significantly less rapidly than GDP.鈥� In a league table of the amount of
energy countries use for every dollar of GDP that they create, China is
sandwiched between New Zealand and Belgium, and looking down on a profligate
US.
All this has two implications. First, it shows that even very poor countries
can make big strides in moderating the growth of their emissions鈥攏ot
halting the growth, but keeping it far below their rate of economic growth. This
is wonderful news. Until now analysts have assumed that energy efficiency became
worse during the early phases of industrialisation and only started to improve
later on. That really did suggest a climatic apocalypse.
The realisation that this relationship between emission rates and economic
growth is not immutable opens up great opportunities, not least for the UN鈥檚 new
鈥淐lean Development Mechanism鈥�. This strategy was agreed at the recent climate
summit in Buenos Aires and is set to be put into practice in less than two
years. It will offer Western energy companies permits to pollute at home in
return for investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency in developing
countries. If the mechanism can work with national trends already appearing in
developing countries, it will be much more likely to be successful than if it
has to fight against them.
The second implication is for industrialised countries. At the climate
summit, US negotiators were whining that their proposed target to cut greenhouse
gas emissions by 7 per cent by 2010 was all but impossible to meet domestically.
Uncle Sam鈥檚 economic growth rate was expected to be so high, they said, that
they were looking at a 30 per cent cut on business as usual. It sounded bad.
But, looking at the Chinese figures, such a target seems achievable.
The US says that it won鈥檛 adopt its target formally unless it sees
鈥渕eaningful鈥� commitments to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from what it calls
鈥渒ey developing nations鈥濃�攃ode for China and a few other countries it
regards as pollution freeloaders. This is a cheek, given the sixfold disparity
in emissions between a typical US and Chinese citizen. And it is also ignorant.
As the UNDP鈥檚 boss James Speth told the Buenos Aires summit, China and several
other key developing countries 鈥渁re already participating meaningfully鈥�. If
anybody is freeloading right now, it is the US. So while the bad news may be
that the US is fighting the inevitable, the good news is that China is showing
we can step back from the climatic abyss.