China Dodges Efforts at Emissions Reduction

Though it didn’t get a lot of coverage, last week marked the end of a round of talks in Bonn, Germany involving more than 180 countries all meeting to come up with a coherent plan to fight global warming. A new plan is needed since the current one, the Kyoto Protocol, expires at the end of 2012.

The new plan will force developed nations to slash their greenhouse gas emissions – by how much though still remains to be seen. But the United States has pushed to absolve China from being included in any system of caps.

My question is why?

The reason given, the reason that China itself pushes, is that it’s a developing nation and that being forced to cut their greenhouse gas emissions would have serious negative effects on their future economic growth.

The “developing nation” excuse though is hard to swallow when you consider that at last April’s G20 summit of the world’s 20 largest developed and developing economies, some observers said the meeting that really mattered was the G2 - the bilateral sessions between the United States and China since they are the two engines that drive the global economy. In fact those in the world of financial journalism have a term for us – “Chimerica” (the names of China and America squished together in case you missed that).

So it does beg the question of how can you be one of the two most important economies in the world while also claiming to be a developing nation with a fragile economy? Of course it’s a good deal for China since they get to avoid all of those expensive emission-capping technologies and schemes, but it’s a bad deal for the world, and one that also basically condemns any emissions-reduction plan to failure before it begins. China is now the number one producer of greenhouse gasses by most estimates, surpassing the United States. And while the US actually saw a slight reduction in its use of coal, the fuel that produces the most greenhouse gas, last year, China’s use increased, and will continue to increase for the foreseeable future – depending on which study you read, China opens between two and four new coal-fired power plants per week.

Meaning that as the developed nations reduce their emissions, China’s will continue to increase, erasing any overall reduction in the amount of greenhouse gas pumped into the atmosphere in the process. There are some countries, ones just starting to industrialize, to modernize, that can make the claim that adopting pollution-reduction technologies and shifting to cleaner fuels will hurt their economies and their populations to such a degree the extra pollution is worth it. But given the size and strength of their economy today, China’s not one of them. The US shouldn’t aid and abet, and the world can’t afford, their efforts to skirt meaningful emissions reduction efforts.