China's Emissions Skyrocket After Buying US
As fears of a worldwide economic slump resurface, the New York Times reported on the Fourth of July that China is launching fireworks for their own economic rebound.
In a nutshell, China is beating the US at its own game, both in trade and energy policy. The Chinese government has been suppressing the price of the Yuan for years in order to keep their exports dirt cheap; and while the US Senate has fractured almost every hope for energy legislation this summer, China has barreled ahead as the top investor in wind turbines and efficiency.
But with the sweets comes the sour: As the standard of living rises for Chinese workers, who have finally made gains after decades of exploitation, their demand for the same luxuries most Americans bought fifty years ago is wreaking havoc on all environmental headway.
The Cold War is truly over, and we have climate change to prove it.
China's energy policy, for the most part, is getting rave reviews. Premier Wen Jiabao has ordered the closing of all inefficient factories by September, and in the past three years China has eliminated over a thousand decrepit coal plants that are still widely used in the United States. There are mandates for light and gas mileage standards coming into effect soon, and based on the gentrification of educated workers and a scarcity of labor (thank you, one-child policy!)— China should be on its way to its best century ever.
Bad news for people who like disposable cardigans, and worse news for the international climate (the real one, not the economic one). The newest projections from the International Energy Agency in Paris are that by 2020 China will be emitting over twice the carbon dioxide of the United States; roughly 11 billion tons annually.
Most of these increases are taking place as the Chinese economy rapidly industrializes. Tailoring and toy production are giving way to heavier industries such as concrete and steel. Trade is also booming, and as workers discover they have greater power, they are also demanding the goods many Americans take for granted.
Bigger cars, electric appliances at home, and air conditioned shopping malls are the industrial fruits the Chinese people have just begun to taste. Meeting this demand has forced the government to launch more coal and oil power plants even as it invests in renewables. In the past six months China's carbon emissions jumped faster than any country in history. Change.org's Graham Webster recently got into some of these issues here.
Some of these increases are inevitable (who wants to tell a sweat shop worker he can't have AC?), and many are not even new; they're just new to China. American capitalism successfully sold China a dream, but unfortunately it was the Mickey Mouse version. And they were the ones who made it.
If the world is going to survive over a billion "Americans," we need to redefine what that means.
Photo Credit: d'n'c
Ben Proffer
is an environment writer and has written for Sherman’s Travel and New York magazines.
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