The East Is Brown - China's Hot New Export Sector - Pollution

[hatrack]

China is doomed to contribute vastly to the world’s environmental problems, estimates Beijing-based independent energy consultant Jim Brock. The reason is simple. “If China introduced the world’s most modern energy saving and anti-polluting devices tomorrow, the absolute level of pollution in the atmosphere would still continue to rise,” he says.

Ironically, China has been quite effective in introducing anti-pollution measures, especially compared to other developing areas such as Africa and Latin America, estimates Brock. But China’s extremely fast growth rate and size means that it will be producing pollution at a rate unparalleled in history. “China is doing in decades what it took the US to do in hundreds of years,” he points out. One result is that China currently produces and burns two billion tonnes of coal per year. That will double in 15 years and double again 10-15 years after that. “There is simply no way of knowing how the planet will cope with these levels of pollution,” says Brock.
As well as China’s compressed growth curve, China’s intense population concentration heightens the pollution problem.

Thus, Beijing and the neighbouring city of Tianjin combined have the population of Australia. Chonqing is one of the largest cities in the world. And China’s population is overwhelmingly concentrated on the eastern seaboard, with vast swathes of the inland practically depopulated. These clusters need to be serviced by gigantic power plants. China has 6GW power plants, while the biggest in the US is just 3GW. China also tends to have very large factories.

EDIT

The choice for the Chinese government is simple: to reduce economic growth, and thereby standards of living, or to keep pressing ahead. Brock is probably right when he says that for the average Chinese citizen environmental issues come well below increasing his standard of living in terms of priorities. However, that could change if China saw a tipping point of the kind that characterised the rise of the environmental movement in the West, such as the terrible London smogs of the early 1960s, and the bursting into flames of the Love Canal in the Ohio Valley. “When it becomes clear that people’s living standards are being significantly affected by pollution, then people will step back and reconsider growth,” estimates Brock. While economists say that the pollution problem should, in principle, be solved by attributing ownership, this is quite hard to do with many kinds of pollution.

EDIT

http://www.financeasia.com/article.aspx?CIaNID=32909

[ramapo]

1. Can't learn from other's mistakes

Isn't that a portender of doom?

It is unfortunate (isn't that an understatement) that we are incapable of controlling ourselves.