Deirdre Griswold
Fonte: Workers World
Link: www.workers.org/2009/world/china_1224/
16 dicembre 2009
After a barrage of propaganda emanating from Washington and the big
business media, most people in the U.S. have been led to believe that any
failure to reach an agreement at the Copenhagen summit on climate change
will be China’s fault.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, it is the U.S. and other industrialized capitalist
countries, where industry is tied to making profits, that are
responsible for the lion’s share of the pollution and greenhouse gases
that are changing the world’s climate. China and other developing
countries have contributed only a minute part of the emissions now
affecting our weather.
China has four times as many people as the U.S., yet it has only in the
past year drawn even with the U.S. in terms of overall greenhouse gas
emissions. This reflects China’s rapid industrial development at a time
when U.S. industry has been shutting down, moving to other countries, and
leaving workers in what was the industrial heartland to suffer in a
decaying “Rust Belt.”
China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which mandated all
industrialized countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases by 2012 — cutbacks that were to average about 5
percent below those nations’ 1990 emission levels. While it participated
in the negotiations and got many concessions, the U.S. refused to sign
the Kyoto Protocol. According to a U.N. report issued Oct. 21, the U.S.
now emits 17 percent more greenhouse gases than it did in 1990.
Most important, China has a planned economy, albeit one in which there is
also a private sector. Over the past three years, the government’s
five-year plans for economic development have been integrated with very
comprehensive and detailed goals on reducing consumption of energy,
pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
No other country has made such a strong commitment to the future.
China has built the world’s largest
solar office building (nella foto)
China’s scientists and engineers have been mobilized to find new ways to
conserve energy and get energy from renewable sources. In fact, just
weeks before the Copenhagen summit began, the world’s largest solar
energy office building opened in Dezhou, Shangdong Province, in northwest
China. The huge building features exhibition centers, scientific research
facilities, meeting and training facilities, and a hotel.
According to china.org.cn: “Green ideas have been applied throughout the
construction. The external structure of the building used only 1 percent
of the steel used to construct the Bird’s Nest. Advanced roof and wall
insulation mean energy savings 30 percent higher than the national energy
saving standard.”
The technological advances developed for this building will now be
available for other projects.
China has become the world’s largest producer of solar panels,
outstripping Germany. It also makes the vast majority of low-energy
fluorescent bulbs sold around the world.
One of China’s biggest problems in regearing for green development is its
historical dependence on coal. According to MBendi Information Services,
China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, and many
of China’s large coal reserves are not yet developed. It has coal
reserves of more than 114 billion tons, 13.51 percent of the world total.
It is coal that has fueled China’s industrial development.
Northern China, especially Shanxi Province, contains most of China’s
easily accessible coal and virtually all of its large state-owned mines.
Many of the smaller mines are privately owned and have a terrible safety
record. The government is now in the process of closing many of them
down.
How can China continue to develop while tackling the problem of
greenhouse gases? Deborah Seligsohn, a Beijing-based energy expert
with the World Resources Institute, says China is now “an emerging
leader in clean-coal technologies. It has built more high-efficiency
coal-fired power plants than any country,” she said. (AFP, Dec. 15)
More such plants are planned to replace old and dirty furnaces in
Shanxi. It’s an example of how countries whose development was impeded by
imperialist control need to break that tie and acquire a basic industrial
infrastructure before they can move to higher, cleaner technologies.
Although U.S. politicians are bent on China-bashing to cover up the
responsibility of imperialism in bogging down a meaningful emissions
agreement, the world’s scientists are more and more disputing this
assessment.
Scientists impressed by China’s actions
Science News, a weekly U.S. science magazine, in its Dec. 5 issue
said, “In diagnosing why the Kyoto Protocol fell short of its primary aim
— catalyzing serious emissions reductions by all major industrial
powers — most analysts point to the United States. The treaty, which
went into force on Feb. 16, 2005, has been ratified, accepted or agreed
to by 189 countries. The lone holdout among nations that negotiated this
accord: the United States.”
It adds that while U.S. negotiators are free to agree to an
international accord, that wouldn’t commit this country, since the
Senate can nix the deal. And Senate leaders in the past refused to
ratify any agreement that didn’t impose emissions cuts on developing
countries like China, India and Brazil.
However, China has not waited for another agreement but has acted on its
own. Science News interviewed Rob Bradley, of the World Resources
Institute’s International Climate Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C.,
who was very impressed by China’s efforts.
“Three years ago, China committed itself to reducing its energy
intensity, or energy use per unit of gross domestic product, 20
percent below 2005 levels — by 2010, Bradley notes. Compared with the
United States, he adds, China also has considerably more ambitious
renewable-energy goals and fuel-efficiency standards for its vehicles.
And China has also mandated major emissions improvements by its 1,000
largest industrial operations, he says. Together, these enterprises
account for one-third of China’s primary energy use.”
Bradley told the magazine, “If the U.S. said: ‘We’ll match what
China’s going to do,’ I’d be fairly happy with that.”
Bradley thinks the reason China has been able to implement such a
profound change in its economic plans is that “unlike American climate
policy makers, who are usually lawyers, most of those in China were
trained as engineers or scientists.”
This begs the question, however, of why most U.S. climate policy
makers are lawyers, instead of scientists. Isn’t it because they are
trained to promote and defend the interests of the transnational
corporations and banks that own the U.S. economy lock, stock and barrel?
In People’s China, even though it now allows capitalists, this exploiting
class does not have the social weight to dictate government policy.
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