Posted 20th June 2001

CO2 Hot Air

In the debate on global climate change it has long been a given that China, with its huge population and endless coal reserves, would overtake the United States early this century as the biggest source of the atmospheric pollution that scientists believe is warming the planet. That specter of runaway Chinese emissions has been cited by President Bush as a major reason for describing as "fatally flawed" the 1997 Kyoto agreement to protect the climate. The treaty exempts developing countries, including China, from its initial, binding limits on the output of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases that scientists believe are causing traumatic changes in the climate..

But treaty obligation or not, China has already achieved a dramatic slowing in its emissions of carbon dioxide in the last decade, Chinese and Western energy experts say. That record of progress has pushed further into the horizon the day that China will surpass the United States as the lead culprit, and it is something that Mr. Bush seems to have overlooked in his harsh appraisal. Chinese officials insist that their country will do its fair share to combat a serious global threat. "We already have one of the world's best records in improving energy efficiency," Zhou Dadi, director of the Energy Research Institute of the central government's State Development Planning Commission, said in an interview. "Our challenge is this: Can we give people an acceptable lifestyle and also address the problem of climate change?" Mr. Zhou said. "As an energy expert, I think we need a demonstration from a developed country to prove that a high living standard can be associated with lower carbon emissions," he said. "Then China will follow that example or even do better."

In the most surprising development, China's annual output of carbon dioxide in the last four years of rapid economic growth has actually declined, according to data compiled by the United States Department of Energy. While the numbers could be overstated because of flaws in both economic and energy statistics, some experts think, China does seem to have achieved a stunning if temporary reversal of the usual trend during economic expansion. "China's emissions of carbon dioxide have shrunk by 17 percent since the mid-1990's," according to an April report from researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. "Remarkably, over the same period, G.D.P. grew by 36 percent. "Even without undertaking binding commitments under an international agreement," the researchers concluded, China "has nevertheless contributed substantially to reducing growth in global emissions."

This achievement has been a welcome side effect of China's shift to market prices for fuels, including an end to coal subsidies, and its programs to encourage energy conservation and fight urban air pollution, mainly by curbing the burning of coal. Only a few years ago, many studies projected that China would emerge as the world's leading source of carbon dioxide by 2020, but these recent developments appear to have put off that day by years or even decades. Although the United States has improved its energy efficiency since the oil crises of the 1970's, recent trends like the fad for large, gas-guzzling vehicles have undermined the former goal of returning carbon dioxide output to 1990 levels. "There is a good basis to argue that China has done more to combat climate change over the past decade than has the United States," according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an American environmental group that aids energy conservation projects in China.

Mr. Bush, most recently on Monday, has said he cannot support the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in large part because it exempts China and other developing countries from the initial limits on emissions of greenhouse gases that richer countries are supposed to accept. With his condemnation of the hard-won treaty, Mr. Bush has set off a tempest in Europe and many developing countries, which are more convinced of the looming threat of climate change and had thought they had agreement to act.

Expect the the Global Political Warming Effect to continue until political storms finally reach a level where old politics is swept away..