IMPORTANT NEWS! SOMEWHAT FRESH AND POSITIVE>And an easy info packed must read. It has just said that China will spend $275 billion over the next five years improving air quality—roughly the same as the GDP of Hong Kong, and twice the size of the annual defence budget. Even by Chinese standards it is a massive sum. The pace at which it deals with local pollution is a matter for China itself. But the country’s emissions are of wider interest because they also pollute the atmosphere, which is a global resource. The scale and speed of China’s development—it consumes 40-45% of the world’s coal, copper, steel, nickel, aluminium and zinc—means it is doing so fast. Since 1990 the amount of CO2 pouring from Chinese smokestacks has risen from 2 billion tonnes a year to 9 billion—almost 30% of the global total. China produces nearly twice as much CO2 as America. All this has led to an explosion of protest across China, including among a middle class that has discovered nimbyism. That worries the government, which fears that environmental activism could become the foundation for more general political opposition. It is therefore dealing with pollution in two ways—suppression and mitigation. It has jailed environmental activists and is planning to limit the power of judicial oversight by handing a state-approved body a monopoly over bringing environmental lawsuits. At the same time, it is pouring money into cleaning up the country. economist/news/leaders/21583277-worlds-biggest-polluter-going-green-it-needs-speed-up-transition-can-china
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:17:01 +0000
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