China

Outlook not good for air quality at Delhi-hosted games

Think the air quality at this summer’s 2008 Beijing Olympics is going to be bad? When New Delhi hosts the 2010 Commonwealth Games, it’ll probably be even worse.

Chinese workers pay for our cadmium-battery habit

In the last 20 years, the United States has essentially dismantled its industrial base, moving production of consumer goods south to Mexico and east to Asia. This has not only dramatically lowered the cost of goods, fueling a consumer boom; it has also helped make our economy less energy-intensive, and lowered our exposure to industrial […]

Stern says he underestimated climate risks

Via WSJ, Sir Nicholas Stern says he underestimated the risks of climate change in his influential report. "We underestimated the flow of emissions from developing countries, especially China," he said, observing that emissions of greenhouse gases from China over the next 25 years will equal the total emissions from the U.S. and Europe over the […]

Can economic democracy make the global economy more sustainable?

Worried about more coal plants, carbon emissions from transportation, and a crumbling infrastructure? Evidence provided by several recent reports point to one of the least explored causes of these problems: globalization, that is, the transfer of manufacturing capacity from developed to developing countries, particularly China.

The mechanisms differ. The U.S. and Europe, which could manufacture using environmentally benign techniques, instead use old, polluting technologies that wreck China's environment and increase global carbon emissions. The 70,000 cargo ships that ply the seas moving all of the globalized goods emit more than twice as much carbon as all airline traffic. And because major corporations no longer feel tied to their local communities, they also no longer lobby governments for a world-class infrastructure.

Now, I recently proposed that it would be a good thing to manufacture locally (and Ryan Avent took me to task for saying so). But what I want to propose is not protectionism, but the idea that if local companies were employee-owned and -operated, the problems I describe in this post would go away -- as utopian as that may first sound.

But first to the NYT article, "China Grabs West's Smoke-Spewing Factories":

More evidence that we’re exporting massive carbon emissions

Last month, President Bush signed into law an energy bill most remarkable for its timidity with regard to climate change. According to sometime Gristmill contributor Peter Montague of Rachel’s Democracy & Health News, the 2007 Energy Act will reduce U.S. carbon emissions by just 4.7 percent by 2030 — clearly not nearly enough to avoid […]

As personal transportation becomes cheaper, the poor benefit and the climate suffers

In an interesting bit of synchronicity, the Times ran two nearly identical articles on the rocketing popularity of motor scooters in the developing world, one focusing on Iraq, the other on Laos. Although neither article mentions global warming, the pieces do neatly wind together some of the threads that will continue to pressure our climate system well into this century.

The first thread is the rise of China as the world's factory floor. In this case, cheap Chinese bikes are flooding foreign markets. Available for as little as $440, these scooters are within reach of the very poor.

It’s almost 2008, and Beijing’s air is still polluted

The city of Beijing has been striving to clear its air for the sake of the Olympic athletes who will descend upon the city this coming summer — but whether it will be able to pull off blue skies remains to be seen. Beijingers were warned to stay inside today, as pollution hit “as bad […]

Notable quotable

“Current economic growth, 11.5 percent or above 11 percent, is too fast and at too high a cost … The government should curb economic growth within a reasonable range that is compatible with energy and resource supply and without causing more imbalance.” — Han Yongwen, secretary general of China’s National Development and Reform Commission

China and the U.S. are both obliged to act on climate change, quick-like

Apparently, based on some recent threads on this site, there’s some dispute about the role China plays in the Great International Climate Change Debate. I’m absolutely snowed under right now, but I want to make two quick points: It is indisputable that the U.S., and developed countries generally, bear a vastly larger share of the […]