Climate fears prompt energy U-turn in China

[indigobusiness]

Climate fears prompt energy U-turn in China
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
13 February 2005


China has abruptly slowed and halted work on building 22 major dams and power stations in a dramatic greening of the policies of the world's most populous nation.

The surprise move - one of the most dramatic ever undertaken by any government - arises from rapidly growing environmental concern in China. It calls the bluff of President George Bush, who has cited growing pollution in China as justification for refusing to join the Kyoto Protocol, which enters into force on Wednesday.

Last week Tony Blair went out of his way to welcome China's readiness to take "a real lead" in combating global warming. In the first instance of its kind, the Chinese State Environment Protection Agency laid down that the projects - which cover 13 of the country's provinces and are worth a total of £7.5bn - should not proceed until their impact on the environment had been reviewed. Among the halted projects is an important power facility at the highly controversial Three Gorges dam on the Yangtse River.

snip

President Bush has cited the prospect of growing emissions of carbon dioxide from China as one of the main reasons for trying to kill the Kyoto treaty as "fatally flawed", and for his administration's attempts to try to stop the world agreeing to a successor. But even before the latest move, China had already done far more than the US to combat the danger of climate change. Although its emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, rose rapidly between 1978 and 1996, they then fell sharply as a result of clean-up measures. US government figures suggest emissions dropped by 17 per cent between 1996 and 2000, while the Chinese economy grew by 36 per cent. During the same period, US emissions grew by 5 per cent.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=610569

[SnoopDog]

1. This is more important that one would think...

USA is not part of Kyoto... Everybody else is.

OK, so here is the USA poopin' and pissin' in the air, water, and food.

Other countries are saying, 'we need to clean up our environment'.

Other countries are forming alliances.

We, or more pointedly bush and his administration, are saying, we poop and piss as we feel.

Sorry... We (bush) are Nazi Germany - the world will not accept it....

[Massacure]

2. They already started, isn't the damage already done?

[indigobusiness]

6. The consequences are just getting started...

and the damage continues.

[EC]

3. It looks to me like China will be emerging as the new only Super Power

Bush has squandered our legacy, we are nearly broke and weak, China is pulling ahead in the environment, in trade and in finance...We'll be ignored in the coming years, more and more...Bush isn't just a lame duck, he's become a paper tiger...

[Colorado Blue]

4. Awesome news - I've always been a student of Chinese...

history, philosophy and art and they do not disappoint me here. This is a very, very old culture and there is a reason they have survived.

Bush - PLEASE WAKE THE F*(_ UP. We are gonna be isolated and under economic attack - people are NOT going to accept being poisoned to death - rapture freaks or no rapture freaks.

[indigobusiness]

5. What this looks like to me is that we are so truly in the shit

that even China is starting to freak.