Recession Cut Emissions; US Must Maintain Momentum as Red China Goes Green

by Mike Smith · 2009-10-08 04:27:00 UTC
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Financial meltdown is a glacier's best friend. The recession decreased industrial activity, causing greenhouse gas emissions to fall 3 percent this year, and they're likely to be 5 percent lower in 2020 thanks to the dip. This positive news is useless unless we maintain the forward momentum, and invest in green tech now — investment that's crucial if we want to stay ahead of China.

The recession will allow China to slow growth of emissions much more easily, and it's taking its chance to invest. "I believe future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become Green China," Thomas Friedman wrote this week. He explained that China's massive investment in green tech is equivalent to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik. He hopes it will provide a similar wake up call to U.S. leadership to not be beaten on innovation. Though he cautions, "China will continue to grow with cheap, dirty coal, to arrest over-eager environmentalists and to strip African forests for wood and minerals." A new space-race is on, though this time there's a planet to be saved, not just an orbiting rock to be conquered.

One quarter of the decrease in emissions is due to countries switching to renewable energy and nuclear power. The International Energy Association is calling on countries around the world to further invest in a green energy future. In order to prevent the most dangerous climate change the world will need to spend "$400bn a year building more than 350 new nuclear plants and 350,000 wind turbines in the next 20 years." This is around 0.5 percent of global GDP, which works out at only one-fifth of the world's annual defense budget.

Photo credit: DrewToYou

Mike Smith
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