When considering questions of development and pollution, measuring pollutants emitted as a function of energy production is one of the most effective measures for obtaining a base understanding of a nation's level of such practices. Obviously, there are other major sources of pollution be it industrial waste, or automotive exhaust, but energy production given its massive scale and comparatively easily discernible figure (its much easier to go off of their albeit questionable figures, rather than attempt to catalogue and draw empirical conclusions on the multitude of small polluters). That being said, despite the CCP discussing stricter and wide-ranging measures for controlling, reporting, and limiting emissions in its twelfth five-year plan it is still extremely difficult to gauge an accurate reading on levels of particulates emitted. Yuhan Zhang of Columbia university notes this, and speaks of a practice that has seemed to become culturally entrenched. Hit the jump to get the full analysis of emisisons figures, standards, regulations, and how those will all continue to intermingle for many years going forward.
During the Cultural Revolution, local officials of work units vastly overstated their figures of production output to curry favor, or gain power and money -- to catastrophic effect: recalibration based on such figures eventually created unattainable levels of production, and harsh punishment when such figures were not met leading to punishment, starvation, and general disarray. Frightening then, that we see a similar pattern of deception and misrepresentation, thinking what a negative cycle of events that could encourage with regard to reporting, containing, and regulating emissions standards.
Harvard law student Ella Chou is acutely aware of this issue, and has with great success (with more to come) attempted to explore, explain, and extrapolate what the true figures of emissions are. After all, in America we can quickly see how lofty oration and lacking action can quickly turn a population sour. Luckily for Hu Jintao I suppose, is that no citizen is about to vote him out of office, though I'm not sure how much longer the Politiburo will stand behind someone who seems increasingly a lame duck. Anyway, Chou has taken it upon herself to reconcile the discrepancy between official figures, and what she estimates to be the true levels of output. With the limited information available, she took statistics of plants from the two largest power companies in China (Datang, and Huaneng): how much power they generated, how much coal and energy each generator consumed, and "Now just plug in the carbon rate estimation into the original power output spreadsheet, and you’ll get the carbon emission data…!" (link). Nerding complete.
Using this chart, we can see that the plant with the highest level of CO2 emissions at about 68,500,000 tons per year for China's most polluting plant, which is quite troublesome compared to the highest emitting coal-firing plant with regard to the same figure in the US which is slightly over 25,000,000 (so ~2.75 times worse). Plant Scherer, in Georgia produces 3,520,000 KW of energy, while its Chinese counterpart only produces about 2,680,000 KW. So we have more pollution, and less production. Not exactly a formula for meeting your own stringent emissions standards. Greenpeace won a major victory in calling for China to pay for the damage its pollution is causing, but with such a lack of accountability and transparency, it sadly means very little.
Scholar Roslyn Hsueh of Temple University recently spoke on her new book at the School of Advanced International Studies (associated with Johns Hopkins and Nanjing University among others) and pointed out some interesting observations regarding government action in particular industries (what she called 'sectors'). One of her driving notions was that the CCP played an active role in industries which it considered to be important to its national security (military or social), but that with non-essential segments of economy they largely left the power, governing, and responsibility to the local governments, if not the businesses themselves. The two examples she used were telecommunications (high level of interest), and textiles (almost completely left alone). Energy production is always going to fall into the category of an important facet of Chinese security and as such, it is hard to imagine that China would ever begin to leave it alone. As such, being quite literally the engine for their massive economic growth, it is unlikely that China will see the need to adhere to its own regulations. After all, it put on a facade in joining the WTO 10 years ago agreeing to up to 49% ownership via foreign direct investment (it makes out at around 9%, though its more frequently in the 4-6% range); ratified the Kyoto protocol and ignored it; and signed the Geneva convention yet frequently and with total disregard whisks its own citizens away never to be seen again. Why then, would they adhere to their own measly emissions standards? I'm not sure, but hopefully it will be soon when they feel their wallets a little lighter, population a little more volatile, and agriculture ever more irrelevant.
Joshua Gottesman
No comments:
Post a Comment