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China: Mother Of All Carbon Emissions

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By JOHN REINIERS

In My Own Words

Published: June 26, 2008

It does get wearisome when the "Blame America" crowd points to the U.S. as the source of everything that is going wrong on the planet – global warming included. And the media play an important and often subtle role depending on how they filter information to perpetuate this view.

Our college son just returned from China, so we had more than a passing interest in an interesting, lengthy article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled "China's Silver Lining," by James Fallows, a frequent contributor. Buried in this well-written piece was a comment that a recent study by economists Maximilian Auffhammer and Richard Carson, of the University of California, concluded that without some startling changes in technology, "China cannot avoid increasing its greenhouse gas emissions faster than other countries can possibly cut theirs back."

Gee, we thought that sounds pretty ominous for an article with such an upbeat title.

So, I decided to research the topic by starting with the New York Times, the font of all wisdom about global warming. Nothing. But wait. If this is true, it would mean that the Times would have to publish facts that would take the heat off (pun unintended) the U.S. as the global warming villain. (It would be like the Times reporting we are making progress in Iraq. That's another no-no.)

So I went to other sources and was shocked to discover that all the studies of China's carbon dioxide emissions had grossly underestimated China's contribution to greenhouse gases. In fact, their study concluded that by 2010 there will be an increase of 600 million metric tons of carbon emissions in China, which will overwhelm the projected 116 metric tons of emission reductions by all the signatories to the Kyoto Protocol.

Moreover, Auffhammer observed that China's emissions should double every decade. So not only has China overtaken the U.S. as a global polluter; according to the data, its emissions are increasing an unbelievable 10 times faster than the United States! (Which might also account for a World Bank finding that 750,000 Chinese suffer premature death every year due to air pollution. This factoid was airbrushed form their 2007 report at the request of the Chinese government to avoid "social unrest.")

This is startling news that didn't get much play in our traditional media. It doesn't fit into the Democratic and mainstream media rubrics of making voters focus on, and feel miserable about, all things American – and not get distracted by China – so they can win the next election.

On the other hand this devastating study was reported in the English version of the China Daily and on the China Economist blog and in the Hong Kong and Shanghai media and, I'm sure, by other Chinese media. It was even reported on the English Pakistan News.net. So the Chinese aren't hiding it anymore. (They can't, given its significant transient population of western business people, our electronically connected world and the fact China is about to host the Olympics.) But our mainstream media doesn't talk about it.

During our son's stay in Shanghai, the city was graced with an onshore breeze that was delightful. On the other hand he said Beijing had awful smog. So officials are frantically getting the city cleaned up for the Olympics. He was told they had taken such drastic steps as emergency shutdowns of half of the factories in Beijing and a plan to control auto emissions during the Olympics by allowing only half the traffic in the city on any one day depending upon whether your license plate is even or odd numbered. The list of temporary "fixes" is endless.

Auffhammer and Carson conclude that current global warming projections are "overly optimistic," and that action is urgently needed to curb greenhouse emissions in China. Other industrialized countries cannot make the difference. In fact, just the annual increase in emissions in China over the next several years will be greater than the current emissions produced by either Germany or Great Britain.

As an interesting aside, George David, CEO from 1998 to 2008 of United Technologies, a $31 billion company that "out guns" General Electric, observed that buildings are important sources of pollution and greenhouse gases. Worldwide, the energy needed "to heat, cool and illuminate buildings accounts for nearly 40 percent of total energy demand..." Now get this – even more than all the energy used by "all forms of transportation!" We – myself included – are so fixated on auto emissions, we can't imagine anything being worse than the dreaded automobile as a polluter. And he says that Chinese buildings require twice as much fuel as those in similar climates, because when they were built, insulation was an unaffordable luxury!

But ever so quick to blame America for all that's wrong in the world, some environmentalists are now saying that, nevertheless, America is still to blame for China's greenhouse gases, because we have been buying all the stuff that polluting Chinese factories have been churning out. You've got to love that kind of creative logic.

Johann Goethe, a key figure of German literature, wisely observed "Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions are popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few."

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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