China

Chinese power production plunges

On DotEarth, Andy Revkin brings us this amazing graph:

(Credit: Richard K. Morse, Stanford University. Data from China's National Bureau of Statistics)

Says Revkin:

Researchers at Stanford University who closely track China's power sector, coal use, and carbon dioxide emissions have done an initial rough projection and foresee China possibly emitting somewhere between 1.9 and 2.6 billion tons less carbon dioxide from 2008 to 2010 than it would have under "business as usual" if current bearish trends for the global economy hold up.

How the U.S. and China can help, not harm, each other

So this is how it worked: Instead of greening our manufacturing base, amping up our recycling system, and competing on the basis of better production technology, we shipped our production to China, which is busy polluting itself and spewing carbon dioxide. In return, the Chinese took the hundreds of billions from sales to the U.S. […]

Post-Kyoto international climate negotiations will depend on China’s cooperation

[Given the importance of China to the fate of the climate, I am happy to introduce a new guest blogger, Robert Collier [PDF]. He is a visiting scholar at U.C. Berkeley, writing a book about China and global warming. He is a former senior foreign-affairs correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle who reported “from a […]

What will make Obama a great president? Part 2

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st century presidents as failures if the world doesn’t stop catastrophic global warming. If global warming exceeds 5°C (or even 3°C), then we will head inexorably toward an ice free planet with widespread desertification, sea levels rising 6 to 12 inches a decade for centuries, the oceans turning into […]

Chinese Premier: Rich nations should ditch ‘unsustainable’ lifestyles and stop buying our crap

OK, maybe Premier Wen didn’t say that last part: BEIJING (AFP) — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday that rich nations should alter their lifestyles to help tackle global warming, at the start of a two-day meeting on climate change, state media reported. “The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to […]

Two new reports detail the enormous toll coal dependence is taking on China

The Chinese government released an official "white paper" today, saying that: global warming is going to wreak havoc on China, reducing grain yields and making it difficult to feed 1.3 billion people; coal is China’s primary contribution to global warming; coal is also China’s cheapest and most abundant fuel; the "coal-dominated energy mix cannot be […]

China to invest $280 billion in rail network ‘as a stimulus measure’

Australian media reports: China will invest nearly $A445 billion (US$ 280 billion) in its overburdened rail system as a stimulus measure aimed at blunting the impact of the global financial crisis. The investment is part of plans to extend the country’s railway network from the current roughly 125,502km to nearly 160,900km by 2010, Shanghai’s Oriental […]

An interview with author and nutritionist Marion Nestle

The contents of your dog’s bowl — kibble, kibble, more kibble — may not look that interesting, but to nutritionist Marion Nestle, they’re nothing less than a microcosm of the global food system. In her new book Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, Nestle (pronounced NES-uhl, no relation to the multinational) investigates […]

Energy efficiency alone is not sufficient

China’s power plant emissions have surpassed the U.S. for the first time and are slated to double in the next decade, despite efficiency improvements. Without major technological innovation it will be impossible to decrease the absolute quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is why government involvement is so important; we need massive R&D and […]