11 Nov 2008: Analysis
Under a Sooty Exterior,
a Green China Emerges
You’ve heard the environmental horror stories: rivers running black, air unfit to breathe, two new coal-fired power plants a week. But thanks to a surging entrepreneurial spirit and new policies, China is fast becoming a leader in green innovation, from recycling to developing electric cars to harnessing the wind.
Call it the new China Syndrome. Putting the world’s most populous country in the environmental doghouse is a game anyone can play. You’ve heard the litany of sins. China is buying up whole mountains in Latin America to get at the copper inside. It is the world’s largest importer of tropical hardwood, most of it hacked illegally from rain forests. Its carbon emissions are now the world’s largest, exceeding even the United States. Many of its rivers are little more than industrial discharge pipes. And didn’t you see all that smog in Beijing around the time of the Olympics?
All true, of course. But even so, much of what is said about China and its attitude toward the environment — even by usually fair-minded folk — is hypocritical and decidedly unfair.
In my travels as a journalist, I have seen the bad side. I have visited the wharves at Zhangjiagang on the River Yangtze, where they turn the rain forests of Asia, Africa and the Amazon into floors for apartments in Shanghai and Beijing. I have literally held my nose at the foul air in industrial cities from Hong Kong to the North Korean border.
I have wondered at how Beijing, once the city of the bicycle, now has a new ring road every time I visit
Just as we have off-shored our manufacturing to China, so we have off-shored our carbon emissions.(there were seven at the last count). And I have read the statistics about how, as it builds its infrastructure, China is pouring 50 percent of all the world’s concrete.
China, in other words, does the bad things that most of the world does, but sometimes with more vigor because it is so big and growing so fast. Its development zeal feels like the United States must have felt in the late 19th century — only with a population an order of magnitude greater.
And there’s the rub. China is huge. For most of human history, it has been home to as much as a fifth of the world’s population. And many of the scary statistics simply reflect that.
China, as WWF reported recently, consumes 15 per cent of the world’s resources. But with 20 percent of the world’s population(1.3 billion people), is that really surprising? Likewise, should we be shocked that the world’s most populous country has the world’s largest carbon footprint? If China were instead a series of smaller countries each reporting their statistics separately, we probably wouldn’t turn a hair.
The people of China don’t have lesser rights because there are so many of them. China may now emit more carbon dioxide than the United States, but its per-capita emissions are only a quarter those of the U.S. And that is before we take account of the Chinese carbon footprint generated by goods that are manufactured there and then exported to the rich world.
A study by the British Tyndall Centre at Sussex University recently concluded that 23 percent of
Greenpeace
Nor should we forget that the eager new industrialists of Shenzhen and Tianjin, Suzhou and Shanghai, have been pumping poisons into the air for much less time than us in the industrialized world. And that matters, because greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. Most of what Britain puffed into the air as James Watt’s steam engine kick-started the industrial revolution is still there. China will take several more decades of breakneck industrial growth before it can exceed the accumulated volumes of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere that should be labeled “Made in America.”
So China is not responsible for where we are today on climate change. And I doubt that either its cumulative or its its per-capita emissions will ever approach those of the U.S. Why? Because, believe it or not, China is going green.
We hear a lot about China building a new coal-fired power station every week. I checked the stats. It’s worse. It has recently been building two new 1000-megawatt plants each week. But last year, China also built more wind turbines than any other country. And its biogas and solar power industries are also growing fast.
China’s green credentials are surprisingly good in many respects. China has long led the world in aquaculture. By raising most of its fish in artificial ponds it has done a huge good turn for the world’s ocean fisheries.
On an island at the mouth of the Yangtze river near Shanghai, they are
Last year, China built more wind turbines than any other country. And its biogas and solar power industries are also growing fast.currently building the world’s first eco-city, powered by renewable electricity, with citywide water recycling and plans for a car-free transport system. Similarly, the recently completed 1,200-kilometer railway into Tibet employed “green construction” methods, according to a paper in Science last year. And the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 is devoted to green urban design.
In June, the country officially banned free plastic bags in shops. The world’s largest plastic bag manufacturer (Chinese, of course) shut down as a result. And the Chinese are now the world’s leading recyclers.
Some people worry that much of the trash from Europe and North America gets shipped from Los Angeles, Rotterdam and Seattle to China for recycling. They seem to think that the Chinese secretly landfill it. Why would they do that? In fact, China is so desperate for raw materials to keep its industrial revolution going that it finds uses for almost any waste it can get its hands on: plastic packaging, the metal in old computers and other electronic goods. Just as the country used to run its agriculture on “night soil” (a handy euphemism for human feces), now it runs its industry on as much trash as it can get its hands on.
Witness the success of China's "Queen of Trash," Cheung Yan. Ten years ago, when China stopped logging its own natural forests to prevent a recurrence of big floods, she anticipated a paper shortage. She went to the U.S. and drove around in an old pick-up begging municipal garbage dumps to sell her their waste paper. She was so successful that today her company, Nine Dragons, ships more than 6 million ton of waste paper a year into China, which she recycles into boxes for electronics goods that will be taking the next container ship back to Europe and North America.
Nine Dragons is now the world’s largest manufacturer of packaging. Cheung is reportedly mainland China’s richest person — and possibly the
The problems that China is finding in obtaining raw materials for its manufacturing plants is pushing it into taking a world lead in waste recycling.richest self-made woman on the planet. I don’t want to be too starry-eyed. China’s pollution problems are extremely serious, and they have global repercussions. But my guess is that China will be forced into adopting ever-greener policies. Its use of coal will soon be curtailed by urban middle-class uprisings against the smog (much as happened in Europe and North America half a century ago). And the very problems that China is finding in obtaining raw materials for its manufacturing plants is already pushing it into taking a world lead in waste recycling.
It is doing out of necessity what environmentalists have been demanding for a long time — “closing the loop” in natural resources, by mining waste to make new.
China already is the world's largest manufacturer of both wind turbines and biogas fermenters and is in the forefront of developing electric cars. Who can doubt that if the United States makes a once-for-all shift to greener energy generation in the coming decade, then the Chinese will be scrambling to become its major supplier of wind turbines and solar panels and much else. Or that if China sees the U.S. switching to renewable energy, it will rush to take the same path. Last month, consultants McKinsey and Company advised China in a new report to “charge up” for manufacture of electric cars to meet likely demand at home as well as abroad.
Call me an incorrigible optimist if you like, but it is at least possible that the two global environmental pariahs — China and the United States — could soon be leading the charge to a more climate-friendly future. And that would be a China syndrome worth nurturing.
POSTED ON 11 Nov 2008 IN Climate Energy Pollution & Health Asia North America
ABOUT THE AUTHORFred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in the UK. He is environment consultant for New Scientist magazine and author of the recent books When The Rivers Run Dry and With Speed and Violence. His latest book is Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff (Beacon Press, 2008). Pearce has also writtern for Yale e360 on world population trends and preserving seed diversity.
Recommend
Tweet
Reddit
Email
Print
Stumble Upon
ShareRELATED ARTICLES
For Africa’s Solar Sisters,
Off-Grid Electricity is Power
U.S. businesswoman Katherine Lucey is working with a network of women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa to sell inexpensive, household solar energy systems. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Lucey explains how solar electricity can transform lives, particularly those of rural women and girls.
Harnessing Citizen Power to
Fund a U.S. Solar Revolution
Environmental activist Billy Parish believes the best way to fight climate change is to fund the renewable energy projects that will supplant fossil fuels. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he discusses how “crowdfunding” can help lead to the widespread adoption of solar power.
Copenhagen’s Ambitious Push
To Be Carbon Neutral by 2025
The Danish capital is moving rapidly toward a zero-carbon future, as it erects wind farms, transforms its citywide heating systems, promotes energy efficiency, and lures more people out of their cars and onto public transportation and bikes.
To Tackle Runoff, Cities
Turn to Green Initiatives
Urban stormwater runoff is a serious problem, overloading sewage treatment plants and polluting waterways. Now, various U.S. cities are creating innovative green infrastructure — such as rain gardens and roadside plantings — that mimics the way nature collects and cleanses water.
Green Crude: The Quest to
Unlock Algae’s Energy Potential
A host of startup companies are pursuing new technologies that they claim will soon lead to large-scale commercialization of biofuels made from algae. But questions remain about the viability and environmental benefits of what some of its developers are calling “green crude.”
MORE IN Analysis
True Nature: Revising Ideas
On What is Pristine and Wild
New research shows that humans have been transforming the earth and its ecosystems for millenniums — far longer than previously believed. These findings call into question our notions about what is unspoiled nature and what should be preserved.
Probing the Reasons Behind
The Changing Pace of Warming
A consensus is emerging among scientists that the rate of global warming has slowed over the last decade. While they are still examining why, many researchers believe this phenomenon is linked to the heat being absorbed by the world’s oceans.
Blocked Migration: Fish Ladders
On U.S. Dams Are Not Effective
Fishways on rivers in the U.S. Northeast are failing, with less than 3 percent of one key species making it upriver to their spawning grounds, according to a new study. The researchers’ findings provide a cautionary tale for other nations now planning big dam projects.
The Scientist as Guardian:
A Tool for Protecting the Wild
An expanding body of evidence shows that the presence of field biologists and their assistants is playing an important part in deterring poaching, illegal logging, and other destructive activities in the world’s parks and wildlife reserves.
Giant Sequoias Face Looming
Threat from Shifting Climate
The world’s largest living species, native to California’s Sierra Nevada, faces a two-pronged risk from declining snowpack and rising temperatures. The threat to sequoias mirrors a growing danger to trees worldwide, with some scientists saying rapid warming this century could wipe out many of the planet’s old trees.
Biodiversity in Logged Forests
Far Higher Than Once Believed
New research shows that scientists have significantly overestimated the damage that logging in tropical forests has done to biodiversity, a finding that could change the way conservationists think about how best to preserve species in areas disturbed by humans.
Will Reform Finally End The
Plunder of Europe’s Fisheries?
Maria Damanaki, Europe’s crusading fisheries minister, is making major headway in changing a cozy, “old boys” network that over-subsidized the European fishing industry and brought about the severe overfishing of the continent’s marine bounty.
Mercury’s Silent Toll
On the World’s Wildlife
Scientists are only beginning to understand the impacts of mercury contamination on birds, fish, and other wildlife populations. But what they are finding is alarming — even low levels can cause harm, and chronic exposure has unexpected and troubling effects.
Black Carbon and Warming:
It’s Worse than We Thought
A new study indicates soot, known as black carbon, plays a far greater role in global warming than previously believed and is second only to CO2 in the amount of heat it traps in the atmosphere. Reducing some forms of soot emissions — such as from diesel fuel and coal burning — could prove effective in slowing down the planet’s warming.
Without Congress, There’s Still a
Path to U.S. Progress on Climate
Don’t expect the U.S. Congress to take any action on climate change in the next four years. But by continuing to use its regulatory authority and working with the states, the Obama administration can make significant progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
RELATED e360 DIGEST ITEMS
21 May 2013: Large Majority of Americans
Believe Global Warming Should be a Priority
21 May 2013: Interview: For Solar Sisters,
Off-Grid Electricity is Power
20 May 2013: System Converts Pig Waste
Into Biogas at Chinese Pig Farms
17 May 2013: ‘Artificial Forest’ Nanosystem
Mimics Photosynthesis, Researchers Say
16 May 2013: Scientist’s U.S. Road Trip
Reveals Unexpected Methane Emissions
15 May 2013: Glaciers on Everest Disappearing
As Temperatures Rise, Snowfall Declines
14 May 2013: Interview: Climate Pioneer’s Son
Ponders a Worrisome CO2 Milestone
13 May 2013: Project Looks to Quantify
Power Emissions Through Crowdsourcing
10 May 2013: U.S. Web Tool Aims to Bolster
Research on Climate and Health Links
09 May 2013: Third Coal Export Proposal
Falls By Wayside in Pacific Northwest
Yale Environment 360 is
a publication of the
Yale School of Forestry
& Environmental Studies.
SEARCH e360
CONNECT
Twitter: YaleE360e360 on Facebook
Donate to e360
View mobile site
Bookmark
Share e360
Email newsletter
Subscribe to our feed:
ABOUT
About e360Contact
Submission Guidelines
Reprints
e360 PHOTO GALLERY
South African photojournalist Adam Welz documents the harrowing relocation of six white rhinos to a region that has lost all its rhinos to poaching. View the gallery.
DEPARTMENTS
OpinionReports
Analysis
Interviews
e360 Digest
Podcasts
Video Reports
TOPICS
BiodiversityBusiness & Innovation
Climate
Energy
Forests
Oceans
Policy & Politics
Pollution & Health
Science & Technology
Sustainability
Urbanization
Water
REGIONS
Antarctica and the ArcticAfrica
Asia
Australia
Central & South America
Europe
Middle East
North America
e360 VIDEO
A Yale Environment 360 video explores Ecuador’s threatened Yasuni Biosphere Reserve with scientists inventorying its stunning forests and wildlife. Watch the video.
e360 MOBILE
from Yale
Environment 360 is now available for mobile devices at e360.yale.edu/mobile.
e360 VIDEO
In a Yale Environment 360 video, photographer Pete McBride documents how increasing water demands have transformed the Colorado River, the lifeblood of the arid Southwest. Watch the video.
Top Image: aerial view of Iceland. © Google & TerraMetrics.
e360 VIDEO
The Warriors of Qiugang, a Yale Environment 360 video that chronicles the story of a Chinese village’s fight against a polluting chemical plant, was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Watch the video.
OF INTEREST
COMMENTS
Amazing story about the "Queen of Trash." Where are our queens?
Dear Mr. Pearce,
Thank you for spotlighting China's efforts for a
greener future, and for making an enlightening
comparison between China and the US in terms
of environmental impact. The subject is rarely
approached from this angle.
We recently completed a documentary film
about a group of Chinese university students
who embody the more hopeful aspects of
China's environmental future, reinforcing a lot of
what you're writing about in your article.
In the year leading up to the 2008 Olympics in
Beijing, Beijing Forestry University and
international NGO Future Generations teamed up
to organize the first “Green Long March” for
Chinese students. The goal: empowering young
people to become advocates for the
environment.
2,000 college students formed 10 survey teams,
from the great deserts of the northwest to the
grasslands of Inner Mongolia, to see China’s
environmental challenges up close. In our film,
The Road Ahead: The First Green Long March,
Director Ryan Wong captures the experience
through the students' eyes. We see their wonder
as they encounter the natural world in new ways
and their devastation at witnessing the the
human impact of environmental destruction.
In the process of making this film - made as a
collaboration between US based nonprofit
production company Cinereach
(www.cinereach.org) and a Chinese director and
crew - we saw the unsinkable passion and
commitment of China's young people towards a
greener future. They have a deeper
understanding than most of their US
counterparts of how closely their lives and
futures depend on the health and conservation
of the natural environment and have taken
personal responsibility for making positive
change.
With the continued commitment of Future
Generations, this effort is growing and more
students have followed in the footsteps of the
first march. We look forward to seeing where it
goes from here and hope our film will help raise
awareness around their efforts. Ideally, we'll be
able to form partnerships with organizations and
individuals who share our sense of urgency for
spreading hope and inspiring action and get
more conversations like this going.
We'll have a trailer up on our site soon, so
please keep visiting our site (www.the-road-
ahead.com) for info and updates.
Best regards,
Mike Raisler
Producer
The Road Ahead: The First Green Long March
The Chinese claim to be the top annual investor in renewable energy and are embarking on an unprecedented attention to green energy. In 2006, the country announced it was poised to spend $200 billon on renewables over the next 15 years. It has been coal that has pulled millions upon millions of Chinese out of the depths of poverty. The country's rise has given other countries in the region (such as the Philippines) and nations around the world major economic growth. Clean coal technologies will allow this to continue on because substantial power is needed.
Mr. Pearce,
I'm also very encouraged by your hopefulness about the emerging environmental movement in China. I spent August 2008 in Beijing shooting a film about the environmental work that IENGOs are doing and the way that the Chinese government opened up to allow this work to happen. A lot of our film is also focused on environmental education, and I think basing an environmental movement on EE sends a hopeful message to the rest of the world. In China, it was bad, yes, but it's getting better.
Mike, I was actually referred to the work being done by Future Generations/The Long Green March by a contact when we were shooting in Beijing. I'm looking forward to your film, and I'll keep checking your web site.
My video editor told me he'll have a trailer for me by the end of November that we'll put up on our site. We expect our film to be finished in the early spring.
I've also been called an incorrigible optimist, but I think that is needed to balance the Western media's pessimism. According to Jim Fallows in 'China's Silver Lining' in the Atlantic Monthly, China's situation, depending on how it is approached, is the world greatest environmental crisis or the world's greatest environmental opportunity.
Dear Mr. Pearce,
It is wonderful to have writers standing up to the
trend and speaking truths. Even after 30 years,
there is so much the US and other countries do
not understand about China and often they are
misled by articles that only tell part of the story.
I appreciate your words and am glad that Mike
Raisler and others have made comment. I hope
you have a chance to look further into The
Green Long March as it is now the largest youth
conservation awareness movement in China. Bill
McKibben was also with us for some of our
activities this summer and produced a short film
which can be seen at 350.org.
As one who tries to look for what is working and
scale it up, I too am optimistic for a more
climate-friendly future.
The whole world owes China a huge debt for it's one-child policy!
We are very grateful for all those who are creating awareness through positive documentaries and education. It is the first step to change for a greener and more sustainable future.
I am looking forward to the documentary and hope it gets released either through national tv or through other mass distribution channels. I hope it becomes part of the curiculum in Chinese education.
I will be visiting the websites listed above to be kept informed and hope I can participate in the movement for a better tomorrow.
What a fetching idea. Instead of arms races and races to space, a green race between two afflicted, afflicting and capable nations. Thanks for your perspective and logically grounded optimism, Mr. Pearce.
Comments have been closed on this feature.