China — the coal-face of pollution

AN ENGLISH language (EFL) teacher I know emailed me from China last week. He lives and works in one of the many hundreds of Chinese cities with a population of more than one million . His dim glimpses of China on the ground — or rather, on a bicycle — may interest readers.

He says, “Cycling to work yesterday, I could barely see the bicycle in front of me. It was like a scene from Dickensian London. Bikes are still in the majority but, on the business programmes on TV, it’s all talk of cars. Cars for the one thousand, three hundred million people. Most don’t know what global warming is, and those that do wouldn’t let such a notion stop them buying a car. The only time we had clear skies in this city in the last year was when a dignitary came to visit, so all the factories were told to shut down for the day.”

Carbon dioxide emissions in China are increasing faster than in any other country on our planet. The US, subscribing 25% of greenhouse gases is still the leading polluter, but China is in second place and will match America within two decades.

Paradoxically, China is an enthusiastic signatory of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. However, as a ‘developing’ nation, it does not have to meet any targets for emissions reduction, as we do in Ireland and the ‘developed’ world. In fact, Kyoto is ‘a nice little earner’, for China.

It works like this. Carbon credits are awarded to countries which, having little industry, emit less greenhouse gases than they would be allowed for their population, or earn credits by installing renewable energy and carbon dioxide-cutting technologies. Industrial nations that do not achieve the reduction they have committed to at Kyoto can make up the shortfall by buying carbon credits from countries that have a surplus.

China can earn carbon credits by installing new technology, and can then sell these on. It is planning to open 562 new coal-fired power stations in the next four years and is buying American clean air technology to run them. Despite this technology, the sheer number of new plants in operation may, alone, negate the world’s emission cut-backs made since Kyoto was agreed. Paradoxically, the carbon credits China sells will pay the cost of building the plants.

So, as far as China is concerned, roll on Kyoto! The more nations that commit to reduced emissions, and don’t do so, the better the market for credits.

The more developed nations pollute, the more valuable will they be as demand increases and credits grow scarce. Meanwhile, America not having signed up to Kyoto, has no need to buy credits and, by selling cleaner technology to China, can also earn from the Protocol. So, for America, it’s roll on Kyoto, too! But it gets worse...

Last year, China signed up to a second treaty, an alternative to Kyoto, the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development. Nicknamed the “Coal Pact”, the signatories are the world’s leading greenhouse-gas (GHG) emitting nations — USA, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.

Rather than committing to firm targets for cutting emissions, as do Kyoto signatories, the “coal pact” members pledge to promote technologies that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in coal, allowing it to burn cleaner.

Environmentalists have lambasted the forum as a cynical exercise in evading global responsibility and in profiteering.

The world is a terrible place, my friend in China says, and I can see his point of view as the bicycle in front of his disappears into a toxic cloud. He is speaking as one at (so to speak) the ‘coal-face’ of pollution.

Nature, he says, is a distant memory in China. Half the population lives in new cities where nature is wild and far away, to be avoided or modified for human benefit. People who care about the environment are an eccentric minority as recently demonstrated by a funny story on TV about a man’s single-handed attempt to save black-necked cranes in Yunnan.

Of various insects on restaurant menus, my friend found grasshoppers the most “toothsome”. He ends: “Each day offers new gastronomic challenges.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to combine baby squid with pig’s heart and garlic stalks, or tripe with jellyfish and artificial ham. But I’ve managed to eat both this week. I will now go and scramble some inorganic eggs to accompany a piece of improvised, probably toxic, toast to the accompanying harmonies of car-horn, car-alarm, fireworks and expectorating neighbours.”

A neighbour who accompanied the Clonakilty Liveable Community group to China to collect an award says the people are the nicest one could meet. Taxi drivers, when offered over-generous tips, refused them — not in Shanghai, but elsewhere.