China Draws Line in Sand to End Pollution for Good

Reuters ^ | August 16, 2006 | Chris Buckley

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

BEIJING — China will rigorously enforce limits on industrial pollution as it seeks to rein in rampant pollution and tame frenetic economic growth, the nation's top environment official said.

Zhou Shengxian, head of China's State Environmental Protection Administration, said government efforts to cut sulphur dioxide and other pollutants belching into China's hazy skies were failing, the China Environment News reported on Wednesday.

Breakneck economic expansion was instead overwhelming official goals to cut emissions and energy use, he said in a speech to officials on Tuesday.

"The central leadership is treating reductions in energy use and major pollutant emissions as two major hard targets -- red lines that can't be crossed," he was quoted as saying.

Zhou urged environmental officials to latch on to the ruling Communist Party leadership's determination to cool the economy in a fresh effort to cut pollution.

"The party central leadership and State Council are using reduction of major pollutants as an important means to promote coordinated, sustainable development," he said, referring to China's cabinet.

China has promised to clean its dirty skies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has made green development a key theme of his administration.

But Zhou said giddy investment in steel mills, cement plants, coal-fired power stations and other emissions-heavy industries was defeating pollution limits. He promised a campaign to vet planned projects, especially those with investment of 100 million yuan ($12.5 million) or more.

China has become the world's top emitter of acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide, with discharges rising 27 percent from 2000 to 2005, mostly from coal-burning power stations, SEPA officials said earlier this month.

Zhou said estimates from 17 Chinese provinces indicated that discharges grew another 5.8 percent last year.

"We must face up to the fact that in the first half of the year emissions of major pollutants nationwide didn't fall, but rose," Zhou said.

"Investment in some pollution-related industries accelerated," he added, noting investment in coal mining and processing grew 45.7 percent compared to the first half of last year.

But the government's determination to tame growth -- which hit 11.3 percent in the second quarter compared to the year-earlier period -- was an opportunity for environmental enforcers, Zhou said.

Wen has ordered local governments to establish accountability rules for implementing caps on sulphur dioxide and other pollutants, and demanded that local officials face inspections for pollution control, Zhou said.

"Implementing reduction goals for major pollutants is the key focus of our work in the second half of the year," he said, warning officials that they should not assume the government's five-year plan for reining in pollution gave them ample time. ($1=7.981 Yuan)

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Umm . . did you even read the first line of the article?

The title was from Reuters! The Chinese themselves just said they want to actually enforce the rules that are on the books. Come on DM, you are smarter than that.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"Yeah, go and earn money but don't kill the environment."

And this is the problem in America today. On one side you have radical environmentalists who understand that we need pristine land to live and on the other you have corporations, who produce their products and do at times pollute.

What we should be doing is putting both groups together to work together to produce the best solutions while eliminating government regs that stifle growth. Give incentives based on partnerships.

[palmer]

Rural areas once needed wires for 2-way communication, that point has long since passed and would have passed sooner had it not been for bad spectrum policy, subsidies and other government boondoggles. I just finished reading an article on Swiss farm subsidies. It is probably one of the reasons that Switzerland has per-GDP CO2 emissions that are 4 times ours. It takes a lot of energy to farm above 2000 meters but they want it for its appearance and the farmers have a lot of political clout.

The "public good" is an overgeneralization of several rights and a lot of socialist junk. I have the right to clean air, CO2 doesn't make it dirty. I'm sure we've argued this before, but AGW is based on models that primarily use water vapor to warm the earth, CO2 only contributes a degree or two. If you insist on defining a "public good" then define it as a function of model output, then I can pay to have SO2 injected into the upper atmosphere or some other equally cheap solution to warming (if it is indeed a problem).

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

My guess is that in a face to face conversation we would find we agree on most points. Our mild areas of disagreement is what makes this interesting.

In terms of the anti climate change water vapour argument, I have posted about this before.

If you view the atmosphere (the greenhouse gasses that is) as a glass that is 99.99 water vapour, then it does make logical sense the .001% is irrelevant.

However, the reality is that it a glass is not the correct analogy, but rather a sensitive (yet sometimes self-correcting) balance. If you add too much is one direction you will get a signficant shift. We don't know how much that is and could be less than .001%. If you combine human emissions with what might be a normal cyclical warming, the shift could be very, very great and the self-balancing mechanism will take a time-period longer than is relevant for human beings.

Ultimately it is quite obvious from the time that I have been posting at FR that the climate change debate is moving in my direction and not the other way.

Even if you don't believe in it personally, it is simply time to start advocating reasonable measures based on conservative market mechanisms. Otherwise we are going to get something much, much worse, more costly and more destructive.

By the way, have you ever been to Switzerland? I have and I understand why they pay the price they do to keep their country looking like it does. Actually this is the first time I have ever, ever heard anyone criticize the way the Swiss run things. Very odd Palmer, very odd.

[palmer]

I am 1/2 Swiss. I was quoting from an article in Swiss-American review (or something like that) which directly criticized wasteful farm subsidies. Nothing odd about that. As for your 0.001% argument, that requires models. There is no other way to argue it except as some fringe AGW alarmists do, theorizing about a venus-like CO2 effect. The debate is temporarily moving towards the alarmist side, but alarmists will always end up rejected in the end because their dire predictions, like this year's hurricanes, won't come true. That simply proves that models are more complex than they will admit, that weather provides numerous negative feedbacks, and their models do not adequately handle weather.

Again, I will repeat the challenge I make to all AGW enthusiasts. If your models really do predict warming, then let's use the same models to figure out the cheapest solution which will surely not be the limiting of CO2. Their general rejection of that challenge betrays their agenda which is anti-growth and ultimate anti-humanity. There is no "CO2 commons", there are much cheaper ways to deal with warming, if indeed it is a problem.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Does being 1/2 Swiss mean you hold a Swiss passport? Also, does that mean you have been there?

Regardless, you are correct that Climate Change models are correct and subject to inaccuracies. If they weren't there would be zero debate. That is the way science is.

As for the issue of being an alarmist, I would ask the following questions:

Does your town/city have a fire department? If so, would you say a significant percentage of calls to which they respond are false alarms? Is that a reason for the department not to respond? Is it a reason for them not to exist? When there are real fires, does it generally require the entire capacity of the fire department or is their spare capacity in case of a truly large problem?

Environmental alarmists sometimes are kooks and sometimes they shout when the problem is real. The potential problem in this case is huge and the number of people shouting is only growing.

Talking about 1 hurricane season as proof or disproof of a warming trend is evidence that one does not understand the issue or the debate. I know you are smarter than that.

[palmer]

No. About 4 years ago. Dangerous fires are real, dangerous warming is a model output. Benign fire and benign warming are both generally good. A rule similar to what AGW proponents want would be to ban outdoor burning. I am allowed, under current conditions, to burn any time of day. I still choose after 4PM (the spring or drought rules) so I can keep better track of it and let it run in the less windy, less dry overnight hours.

Environmental alarmists will scream about forest fires ignoring the fact that I know what I am doing. They scream about super hurricanes, then when we don't have any, they look stupid. If anything, they hurt your cause since the average joe will tune everyone out, alarmist or not.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

they hurt your cause since the average joe will tune everyone out

Science isn't a democratic process though.

I know the IDer's wish it were so, but it isn't. Scientists need to base their recommendations on the best available science. Politicians heed or ignore their advice at their own peril.

At the moment I see every industrialized nation with leaders that more or less except what the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is telling them about man's contribution to climate change. The only exception is the American President. The same statement could be made about evolution.

[palmer]

Meetings, gotta go. When I warn about people tuning out, I am warning AGWers against hyping the threat. Don't hype. And if the models say it will warm, then the models can also tell us the consequences of the warming as well as the cheapest ways to fix it.

[sportutegrl]

To put it more succinctly: "You can catch more flies with honey."