China

Bush-like doubletalk from Chinese foreign minister

The Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, gave a talk at CGI that would have made President Bush -- or Frank Luntz -- proud. Brian may have liked the rhetoric, but I (and a number of others I spoke to in NY) thought the comments were divorced from reality, pure spin.

You can judge for yourself from the entire transcript, which I will excerpt and comment on here because I think the speech is much more important and ominous than Bush's recent climate speech. After all, Bush will be gone soon, but if this speech reflects China's view of the climate problem, we are all in deep, deep trouble. Yang says:

A review of history shows that climate change occurs in the course of development. It is both an environment issue and a development issue. But ultimately, it is a development issue.

Uh, not really. He presumably meant to say "rising greenhouse gases (GHGs)" instead of "climate change." And he presumably means to imply that you can't have development without climate change/GHGs.

China’s foreign minister talks climate and development

China's foreign minister Yang Jiechi focused on climate change during his moment in the CGI spotlight yesterday:

Bill Clinton calls for countries to follow Japan’s lead

Bill Clinton introduced the morning plenary today by, once again, honoring the companies and people who've committed to the Clinton Global Initiative to take steps to increase energy efficiency and decrease greenhouse-gas emissions.

But he touted one dubious statistic: If China, India, and the United States were to become as efficient as Japan, that would decrease global greenhouse-gas output by 20 percent. That statistic is based on this study by the McKinsey Institute and I think it's true only if, in an era of enhanced efficiency, the 2.5 billion people in China, India, and the United States didn't respond to resulting lowered energy costs by actually consuming more energy.

Still, it would be a huge step forward, and I suppose it's better that Bill Clinton's up there making this all seem possible, rather than pointing out the obvious challenges.

Urban growth rates in Qatar and China leave Friedman skeptical about climate change mitigation

First the good news from The New York Times:

We have ended TimesSelect. All of our Op-Ed and news columns are now available free of charge. Additionally, The New York Times Archive is available free back to 1987.

Good for them. Interestingly, even though I had paid my money to get TimesSelect, I pretty much stopped reading the stuff behind the barrier because I couldn't connect readers (i.e., you) to the material. The NYT had basically taken some of their best columnists out of the global discussion. Now they are back.

Friedman has a new piece titled "Doha and Dalian" -- "Doha [top] is the capital of Qatar, a tiny state east of Saudi Arabia. Dalian [bottom] is in northeast China and is one of China's Silicon Valley." Their growth rates have surprised even itinerant Tom:

Looking at an industrial-meat giant’s China deal

While PETA roils Gristmill and other greenie sites by brandishing climate change to promote vegetarianism, Smithfield Foods just keeps cranking out industrial meat. As I noted in last week’s Victual Reality, the company recently announced a deal to sell 60 million pounds of pork to China. Since then, Smithfield has revealed details about how it […]

Residents in over 100 Chinese cities urged to walk, bike, or use public transit this Saturday

China, once famed as a bicycling nation, tries to put the genie back in the bottle.

Developed world scolds China for doing what it does

For 200 years the Western world has plundered the world’s oil and fouled its atmosphere, and despite a recent flurry of happy talk to the contrary, it is still doing so. So it’s rich indeed for Merkel to go to China and ask them to please stop. If I were Premier Wen Jiabao, my response […]

‘Eco cities’ easier said than done in today’s China

Remember architect Bill McDonough’s much-ballyhooed "eco-cities" in China? Mara Hvistendahl points to troubling signs that the projects are falling apart.

China’s central government faces a choice between democracy and eco-collapse

"Choking on Growth" is the apt title of the new New York Times series on the "human toll, global impact and political challenge of China's epic pollution crisis." Epic, indeed. The first installment shows how "As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes." The statistics are daunting: