Enviro: China: Visit to Japan by Chinese premier opens hope of enviro concern in world's largest country

Today's CSM brings word, in an article by Jason Miks "Chinese premier's visit to Japan marks major thaw--Wen Jiabao will address Japan's Diet, discuss trade, and even play baseball" (Apr11,2k7) that maybe China is becoming consciousness of its tragic overdose of pollution. Japan suffers from what the wind carries from continental China to the Japanese islands.

Despite the extended tensions in political relations, economic ties between the two countries have been thriving. China's trade with Japan in 2006 jumped 12.4 percent from a year earlier, to $207.36 billion – more than double the $101.91 billion recorded in 2002, according to Chinese government figures.

A further sign of the improving economic and political climate was China's decision in January to, in principle, to resume imports of Japanese rice. Imports were suspended in 2003, ostensibly over insects being found in the rice, though the decision was widely viewed as having a political element.

However, though economics have helped drive China-Japan relations forward, China's rapidly growing economy presents its own problems.

This Sino-Japanese trade bonanza includes the nasty enviro consequences that puts China on a projectile to surpass all countries in pollution this year. Not only does this pollution problem infect China's own life and population, it has wider implications as the smog moves on the winds to Japan and across the Pacific to North America. Much of San Fransisco's smog originates in China. Japan is not unaffected. But just as Japan is stressing politeness to the Chinese at the moment (this being a big anniversary of Japan's slawter of Chinese in Nanjing decades ago), so China's premier Wen is stressing politeness since anti-Japan nationalism has previously stirred uncontrollable crowd violence against Japan.

Altho China was exempted from the Kyoto Protocols on the environment (Canada agreed to China's exemption and signed too, the USA refused to exempt China and did not sign), China now wants to give Japan the impression that it will join the worldwide anti-pollution movement. But, while Japan has fostered the manufacture and sale of non-polluting alterntively-fuelled cars, China has simply upped its auto production and the machines are all polluters. Meanwhile, China has made huge deals for the import of oil without alternative fuels appearing on its production schedules. So we may be forgiven when we greet with disbelief, reporter Mik's mention of the Chinese diplomcacy with Japan regarding the environment.

Indeed, an expected joint statement during Wen's visit on tackling global warming suggests that China sees improved relations with Japan as an opportunity to try to burnish its credentials as a good global citizen. China is said to be ready to enter post-Kyoto negotiations on a future framework and also to agree to work with Japan on a number of projects including water purification and reforestation.

Glosserman says that one motivation for the recent shift is China's determination to make Wen's visit a success. "Improving relations with Japan makes China look like a responsible stakeholder," he explains.

The sad truth is that China had a unique opportunity to introduce anti-pollution measures much earlier in its rapid-industrialization process. It could have devoted itself to the manufacture of alternatively-fuelled vehicles, providing first-time auto buyers non-pulluters to start with. No such luck, says the fortune cookie.

Enviro: UK: Govt's new draft bill seeks transition to low-carbon economy

The Left-Anarchist Christian news source, Ekklesia reports on important developments in the United Kingdom regarding the environment. Recent govt initiatives, coming a month after the evangelical missionary organization, Christian Aid published a full-scale environmental report for the UK, will be accompanied by separate legislative proposals by the UK Conservatives and also the UK Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile. all British proposals suffer the same Achilles Heel as do the current and earlier Canadian ones: the UK and Canada are both signatories to the Kyoto Protocols on the environment which treaty gives Communist China a carte blanche on accelerating carbon emmissions to the extent of immediately eating up and surpassing the planned British restraints, considered from a global perspective.

[UK]'s Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband’s draft Climate Change Bill, published on 12 March, which aims to enforce a 60 per cent cut in UK CO2 emissions by 2050, is a significant step in the right direction – but will require many amendments as it goes through consultation and Parliament, Christian Aid said today.

Christian Aid’s senior climate policy officer, Andrew Pendleton, acknowledged that the very act of publishing the bill makes the UK the first country to bring forward a legal framework for a transition to a low-carbon economy. "Mr Miliband is to be congratulated for publishing the bill and he is right to be proud of it – he and the government are an example to the rest of the G8," Mr Pendleton said.

"But if the final legislation is not significantly stronger, the process would represent a massive lost opportunity. It is the first step on a long journey rather than the destination itself."

Christian Aid is campaigning for a climate change bill that includes cuts of at least 80 per cent by 2050 with annual carbon budgeting ‘milestones’ rather than five year budgets – there is too much flexibility and wriggle room in a five-year cycle.

It also wants mandatory reporting of CO2 emissions by companies trading in the UK according to DEFRA’s own, currently voluntary standards.

Campaigners say that the world’s poorest people are already suffering the impact of climate change and stand to lose livelihoods and lives if the situation deteriorates.

But, of course, the situation is deteriorating, as China's emissions have already reached and are rapidly surpassing those of the entire European Union, to the effect that rapid depeening of the worldwide crisis from that source (on the same environmental reasoning) ensures that "the world's poorest people ... stand to lose livellihoods and lives" because "the situation is" indeed "deteriorating."

Even a two degree rise is likely to have massive, negative consequences; anything exceeding this would be an unmitigated disaster.

The Bill has four main pillars: it will set a UK carbon budget every five years; it will set up a committee of experts on climate change to advise the government on the economic impact of carbon; it will set up a system of annual reporting to Parliament on government progress towards each budget and will include enabling powers to set up carbon trading schemes through secondary legislation – which may even eventually mean individuals will have their own carbon budgets.

Mr Pendleton said: "A UK cut of 60 per cent of CO2 emissions is not enough. The ambition at the heart of this bill must be to cut CO2 emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050, with as steep a decline as possible as soon as possible, which means 40 per cent cuts by 2020. With the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats both developing proposals of their own there’ll be everything to play for as this bill passes through Parliament.

We should congratulate UK and EU for these efforts (whatever flaws they may yet habour), and we should urge Canada and US to move forward with the best they/we have got to date. But a united diplomatic effort, using all the powers of trade and world propaganda, is called for, especially as the 2008 Olympic Games in China draw closer. Else China will definitely secure for itself by then the Lead Prize as the world's worst polluter.

The struggle for a better and less carbon-incresive environment in Europe, UK, Canada, and USA will involve each responsible person politically and personally; but a united international front to curb China's pollution, while yet encouraging its industrial development and raising the standard of living of its population, is mandated by world conditions today. May the Lord have mercy on us all for the damage done to the good Creation.

Enviro: Canada: Why did Libs (Chretien, Martin, Stewart, Dion) not demand equal carbon-fuel constraints on China?

The irrepressible publisher of the China e-Lobby's email newsletter, JD Maguire offers some astute remarks on Communist China's now-leading role in worldwide pollution.

Whatever one may think of the Kyoto agreement, the fact that it exempts Communist China, has long been a chief argument of its critics against the deal. Proponents have argued that Communist China's emission levels wouldn't challenge America's for years to come.

Well, that line of argument has passed its best-by date, literally. New figures from the Communists themselves (of all people) have revealed that the United States will fall behind Communist China in carbon-dioxide emissions as early as this year. In fact, emissions from Communist China have nearly doubled since 2001 (San Francisco Chronicle). Or, to put it another way, "China's greenhouse gas emissions have recently been growing by a total amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together."

Even those who fervently believe in man-made global warming must now agree that Kyoto is useless without including what will soon be the largest carbon emitter on the planet. All it will do is allow the Communists to continue to rapidly overdevelop, destroy its ecology, build up its military, and arm or otherwise aid terrorists without any qualms while the free world geopolitically handicaps itself.

I checked out the live-links with which Maquire documents his remarks. In the SanFransisco Chronicle, Robert Collier, "A Warming World: China about to pass U.S. as world's top generator of greenhouse gases" (Mar6,2k7).

Far more than previously acknowledged, the battle against global warming will be won or lost in China, even more so than in the West, new data show.

A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

This information, along with data from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based alliance of oil importing nations, also revealed that China's greenhouse gas emissions have recently been growing by a total amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together.

"The magnitude of what's happening in China threatens to wipe out what's happening internationally," said David Fridley, leader of the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"Today's global warming problem has been caused mainly by us in the West, with the cumulative (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere, but China is contributing to the global warming problem of tomorrow."

New statistics released in Beijing on Wednesday by China's National Bureau of Statistics show that China's consumption of fossil fuels rose in 2006 by 9.3 percent, about the same rate as in previous years -- and about eight times higher than the U.S. increase of 1.2 percent.

While China's total greenhouse gas emissions were only 42 percent of the U.S. level in 2001, they had soared to an estimated 97 percent of the American level by 2006.

Maguire also puts us on to a telltale graph accompanying Collier's article but on another page. The graph makes clear that China has well-surpassed Europe, has rapidly risen to American levels, and is now a rapid projectile that is moving without check either to protect its people, air, water, and cities; but is becoming a menace to the whole world.

Meantime, Japan has reached equilibrium and is, for the good of the whole world, manufacturing hybrid-fuelled battery-driven cars that are slowly gaining increased public favour there. While that be true, India which was close behind Japan in the production of carbon-increasive fuel emissions, now without equilibrium it has surpassed Japan on India's upward climb on the chart. But this should be clear, neither Japan nor India come near to producing what Europe, USA, and most/worst of all China are doing. The pace and time factors of China's climb threaten the world's air and water--even if all the other countries mentioned manage to reduce their carbon-incresive emissions to Zero!

Now, Canada doesn't even appear on the lists. However, while Canada under the Liberal Party govts of the last 40 years has slaveringly touted among its own entrepreneurs and abroad thru "trade missions" sponsored mass siginings of Canada/China business deals and investments, became signatory to the Kyoto Protocols without requiring its dubious trade partner China to undergo the same restrictions required of all signers to reduce carbon-increasive emissions. China should have had its feet held to the fire with all the rest of the signers. Instead, Canada was complicit in China's carte blance, free pass, whatever you may wish to call it. This lack of analysis and fores+t regarding China, was the result of extremely poor plannning on the part of the Liberal government, its prime ministers Chretien and Martin, and its environment ministers Stewart and Dion (who is now leader of the Fed Libs). In truth, Dion never cared for the environment and he never cared about either China's or Canada's meeting the targets of the Kyoto Protocol. Allowing China to go scot-free was a kind of Munich that his party's China boosterism foisted on the Canadian people thru short-term thinking. It was a most astounding betrayal of environment.

Dion now talks grandiosely about his commitment to longterm planning, but he's all along been part of unleashing China's rapid-increase worldwide lead in destroying the global human heritage of air and water. He was a cabinet minister of a govt which signed on to giving China a free hand, because he and his party had no longterm plan; now China is repaying Canada by making our own signing of Kyoto irrelevant to the world's sink into deep environmental sickness.

Whether Stephen Harper's minority Conservative govt will make a really positive difference for environmental concerns in Canada longterm (given that any plan from Harper will have to be effective in the huge quintupling of the Alberta oil fields and refining of tar and other impurities out the carbon-increasive oil products, consequently thereby increasing the longevity of carbon emissions from traditional autos [etc]) on Canada's roads--all that remains to be seen.

But Stephane Dion has had his chance. He has proved a lousy steward of the environment, now that the Liberal past is exposed for lack of longterm planning inherent in its signing on to Kyoto while exempting China, all to the world's longterm extreme damage. Dion should not be rewarded for this perfidy by being elected Prime Minister.