China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Huge, But So Are Its Efforts To Curb Them
Critics of carbon markets, like California’s cap and trade, have a great deal substance to their arguments. But what happens when China, a country that burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, asserts that it will become world’s largest financial market devoted to cleaning up the air?
If you lived in Shanghai (pictured), it’s very likely you’d be more than a little excited about this idea–or any other concept that might make your city look a little like it was part of a dystopian novel.
From this article in the New York Times:
China released plans on Tuesday to start a giant market to trade credits for the right to emit planet-warming greenhouse gases. The nationwide market would initially cover China’s vast, state-dominated power generation sector, which produced almost half of the country’s emissions from the burning of fossil fuels last year. If it works as intended, an emissions market will give Chinese power companies a financial incentive to operate more cleanly. The long-awaited announcement could bolster global efforts to combat climate change after President Trump signaled this year that the United States would back away from Obama-era promises to curb emissions. It could also serve as a big — though ultimately government-controlled — laboratory for such carbon markets, after earlier efforts in Europe and at the local level in China stumbled.
Ultimately, the best idea along these lines is the Carbon Fee and Dividend, which levies a progressively-rising tax on carbon-based fuels, then returning some or all of the revenue to the public as a regular energy dividend. This incentivizes a shift to low-carbon energy while protecting consumers from any increases in the costs of carbon-based fuels.
Having said that, when your population is dropping like flies from lung cancer and other respiratory diseases, anything’s better than nothing.
How sad it is that we’re ceding so much sustainability ground to our rising global economic (as well as political, military, philosophical and moral) competition. Our jet-setting leadership are not paid to be visionaries for rational progress.
Craig,
It was always inevitable that other nations with much larger populations would arise to challenge the brief supremacy enjoyed by the US following the Second World War.
There was no question of US economic supremacy as a divided and devastate Europe was forced to rebuild and the British Empire wound down and ceased to exist by granting independence to a multitude of new nations.
The demise of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communism and the discrediting of socialist economic principles awoke a long suppressed economic revival among developing nations as the US slowly sank into social decay and economic stagnation.
From its inception, the USA was always a nation founded in hypocrisy and sustained by self-delusion. The USA preached the lofty sentiments and ambitions of the Enlightenment thinkers, even enshrining some of those principles in the US Constitution, but while US politicians and institutions preached these virtues loudly, the USA seldom lived or practiced what it preached.
The day of reckoning for the US has arrived. The US must accept a new reality. No longer can the US afford the luxury of relying former wealth and prestige. The US must face the change in circumstance and compete to survive. The era of self-delusion and fantasies are over.
The US must put its own house in order before worrying about preaching morality to other nations. The US must learn to be just one of the large nations, not the only large dog in the pack.
That doesn’t mean any other nation, or block of nations are any less cynical than the US, but they do have the advantage of lacking self-delusion. The CCCP leadership of the PRC have no illusions, they have no interest in anything except the advancement of the PRC and their own hold on power.
I’m afraid your desire for a leader, foreign or domestic, to provide “ideological moral leadership” was always a delusion, a fantasy. I realize the need for people (especially Americans) to find someone or something to believe in, but the time for that sort of delusion has passed.
Look around you, re-examine your priorities. The Paris Accord was just another method of disadvantaging America. US citizens can no longer afford to indulge in an orgy of self-loathing and self delusion.
There’s little value worrying about the Arctic, or gushing with praise for Chinese propaganda, while just up the road your neighbours, your fellow Americans, are losing their homes and lives in wild fires !
As I write I’m awaiting a group of my nieghbours and community members whom I’ve invited to discuss how we can improve and defend the picturesque Valley we all share. We might be only able to influence improvements in our small rural area of Australia, but we are proud of our growing list of achievements and I’m astonished at how much interest we have attracted from other often distant communities.
It hasn’t always been easy. Attitudes can be hard to change and I’ve learned to be persistent while being patient and understanding. Inclusiveness is difficult, but it breeds trust and cooperation.
Carbon Fee and Dividend, emissions trading, cap and trade or straightforward carbon taxes, like all complex regulatory schemes is doomed to economic failure. The proponents of such schemes can never explain or justify the reasoning in economic terms, instead resort to ideology and theoretical scenarios, usually based on speculative fantasy.
Such proposals are always advocated by those keen to spend “other peoples money”. Loud advocates, with worshipful acolytes, but lacking any practical knowledge.
Such schemes always fall into disrepute, the best they become bureaucratic boondoggles preventing any economic growth and environmental benefits, at the worst they become plagued by fraud.
Australia briefly flirted with a Carbon Tax before the electorate rejected such a tax before it could be implemented. I’m proud to say I played a small part in the removal of such odious legislation (and the government that proposed the tax).
I believe we, as environmentalists, must return to the basics. We must concentrate on researching, commercializing, and implementing cleaner technology (even if only of a modest scale). We must be more inclusive and compromising to gain support and cooperation.
Most of all, we must be able and willing, to spend the time to justify our advocacy, not simply repeat slogans, doctrines or old myths.
It’s important we answer all the questions, and listen to the evidence behind dissenting opinions. (after all, they maybe right !). This is the only way I know to overcome objections and persuade people to change and embrace better environmental practices.
IMHO, displaying and implementing clean tech is the best method of persuading folk to understand the importance of caring for the environment. It’s not “preachy” or even political. Clean tech is inclusive and understandable.
We have invested in quite a large amount of solar and even small scale wind power, but we never shy away from answering or acknowledging the potential economic or environmental disadvantages in either technology. Ignoring such questions and/or resorting to rabid dogma, would only serve to alienate the support we are trying to enlist.
Protect earth is a thing we have to do. And it is also our responsibility, too.