CHINA'S DILEMMA: BETWEEN GREEN TARGETS AND SOCIAL UNREST

CHINA'S DILEMMA: BETWEEN GREEN TARGETS AND SOCIAL UNREST

The Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/27/wchina27.xml

By Richard Spencer in Beijing

China's prime minister has taken personal charge of efforts to repair

the country's disastrous environmental record, after they were

repeatedly blocked by local government officials obsessed with

economic growth.

Wen Jiabao's decision to head a new task force focusing on the

environment was made at a meeting of the state council, the country's

cabinet, state media reported yesterday.

"China is in grave need of cutting energy consumption and pollution,"

a spokesman said quoting Mr Wen. He also admitted that Beijing was

already failing to meet targets set less than two years ago.

The announcement followed three major setbacks in a week for China's

plans to shift its focus from economic growth to so-called

"sustainable development", including leaner and more efficient use of

resources such as oil, coal and water.

On Monday, an internal study said climate change would have started to

result in greater flooding in the east and droughts in the north and

west by 2020, with a significant effect on agricultural production in

the following years. Then it was confirmed that publication of the

second part of the report, the grandly titled National Plan on Climate

Change, had been delayed. Environmentalists said it had been delayed

by officials concerned about the effects of the proposals on the

economy.

Meanwhile, a researcher at the International Energy Agency in Geneva

said that China's emissions of greenhouse gases were growing at a

faster rate than predicted and could overtake the world's top

producer, America, as early as this year.

The order to put the environment at the heart of government policy

came in the five-year plan for 2006-10, published at the end of 2005.

Among the plan's targets were to cut energy consumption per unit of

gross domestic product by a fifth and to cut total sulphur dioxide

discharges by a tenth. Sulphur dioxide mixes with water to produce

acid rain. Although attitudes were changing already by 2005, previous

five-year plans put the emphasis on the economic growth needed to

sustain China's growing population, as well as mop up the unemployment

caused by the privatisation and restructuring of old, inefficient

state-run industries.

But the government has met resistance from provincial and local

officials whose incomes, and often promotions, depend on the revenues

earned from China's booming industrial base. Already this year China

has announced it has abandoned for the time being attempts to

calculate "green GDP" - a measure of economic growth that includes

calculations of the costs of repairs to the environment caused by

development.

The results were plain to see in the latest statistics: sulphur

dioxide emissions actually increased, while the cut in energy use was

a mere 1.2 per cent, instead of the four per cent per year necessary

to meet the target by 2010.

Even that target will mean total energy use will increase

dramatically, since gross domestic product is currently increasing by

well over 10 per cent every year.

--

There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling

the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their

cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not

on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away

with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone

are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices

me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.

"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.

--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette

daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net