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China gets serious about global warming
At a small forum at the Holiday Inn
last year, a resident at one of Port Moresby’s settlements posed
this question: “What can we as individuals and families do about
climate change?”
While speakers were happy to outline the global scenario involving
increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, no one was
really game to answer this question.
How much impact indeed could a subsistence farmer in Papua New
Guinea have when Australian prime minister John Howard has argued
that Australia’s contributions to harmful global emissions is
tiny.
Australia joined the United States in refusing to sign the Kyoto
Protocols in 1990 when it commenced global action on greenhouse
gas emissions, both countries arguing that their economic growth
was too important to jeopardise.
Howard, who was then very ambivalent about the global warming
issue, argued that emission cuts would be meaningless unless
rapidly developing countries such as China and India participated.
On a per capita basis, Australia’s emissions are about one-fifth
the level in the United States but 10 times the emissions in
China.
Nevertheless China’s rapid growth rate has seen such harmful
emissions grow at an almost exponential rate and experts suggest
China will overtake the United States to become as the worst
polluter of the atmosphere in the coming year.
Ironically, Australian scientists are among those at the forefront
of climate studies and many have pointed to the inherent dangers
of severe global warming.
A marine and atmospheric scientist, Dr Mike Raupach, who co-chairs
the Global Carbon Project at the Australian government research
organisation, CSIRO, said recently that 7.9 billion tonnes of
carbon dioxide was emitted into the atmosphere in 2005.
He said the rate of emissions were actually getting worse, having
grown from less than 1% a year in the 1990s to 2.5% annually
between 2000 and 2005.
The trapping of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the
consequent global warming is being felt in various parts of Papua
New Guinea and elsewhere in the form of rising sea levels, extreme
changes in weather patterns and events such as the melting of
glaciers.
Although China and its 1.3 billion population are fast gaining
responsibility as the worst environmental polluter, Dr Raupach
notes that China’s contribution since the start of the industrial
revolution in 1800 is only 5% of the global total.
By contrast, the United States is responsible for 25% of all such
emissions which, together with Europe’s contribution, is
responsible for half the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere
over the past two centuries.
“I see China as being quite reasonable – they will do what is
possible, but they will not put their growth at risk,” Richard
Welford, a climate change expert at Hong Kong University, has been
quoted as saying.
“China has 20% of the world’s population, but they only produce
15% of the carbon dioxide.
“America has 5% of the population and produces 25% of the world’s
carbon dioxide.”
While Howard has started since late last year to acknowledge
growing public concern about the issue, Australian corporate
leaders such as BHP Billiton are spending hundreds of millions of
dollars to reduce emissions.
China is taking even firmer action on this front, but has borrowed
a page from their American and Australian counterparts to insist
that it too will not jeopardise the double-digit growth rates the
country is now enjoying.
Nevertheless, China has expressed a firm resolve, in sharp
contrast to the US and Australia, to cut harmful emissions on
grounds that its citizens, who make up one fifth of the world’s
population are also facing the dire consequences of global
warming.
The country has announced major targets for reduction of emissions
through a restructuring of its economy with reduced reliance on
coal-fired power generation, one of the prime contributors to
global warming.
According to the Chinese government, use of coal in total primary
energy consumption has fallen from 76.2% in 1990 to 68.9% in 2005,
replaced mainly by the use of oil, natural gas and
hydro-electricity.
A huge reforestation programme – the area of China’s forest cover
increased from 13.9% to 18.2% between the early 1990s and 2005 –
have enhanced their role as carbon dioxide sinks.
“In 2005, China’s per capita energy consumption was about 1.7
tonnes of coal equivalent, only two thirds of the world average,
let alone the average level of developed countries,” the
government noted in its recent policy document.
The government has said it is attempting to reduce its level of
energy intensity by 20% by 2010 while increasing forest cover to
20%, thus greatly reducing growth in greenhouse gas emissions.
It is hard to imagine there will be no slowdown for the Chinese
economy, which has continued to grow by just over 11% in the first
quarter of this year.
Among its targets is a 30 million tonne in iron ore production
capacity this year and a 100 million tonne reduction by 2010,
while it wants steel output – China is the world’s largest steel
producer – cut by 35 million tonnes this year and up to 55 million
tonnes by 2010.
Similar greenhouse emissions cuts have also been set for
production of highly energy-intensive aluminium smelting and for
industries such as coke, cement, glass and paper production.
Meantime, Australia’s Howard, armed with billions of dollars in
windfall revenues from a resources boom, has promised to spend
A$200 million to help afforestation projects in neighbouring
Indonesia.
 
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