China Environmental Law

I think for my sense of well-being I need to swear off reading any pronouncements from Chinese officials on climate change negotiations until at least November.  Yu Qingtai, “China’s top envoy on climate change,” held a news conference yesterday in which he made absolutely no news.  The headlines from Xinhua tell you all you need to know: “China urges developed nations to cut emissions“ and “China’s efforts to cut greenhouse emissions effective”  (for the NYT’s take see “China Sees Climate Accord, Without Strict Limits“)

Envoy Yu wants us to appreciate that China is doing lots of good things to reduce the growth of its carbon emissions.

China’s National Climate Change Program set a goal of lowering energy consumption per-unit GDP by 20 percent by 2010 from that of 2005, which Yu said would cut a total of 1.5-billion-ton greenhouse emission, an equal to 300 million ton of carbon dioxide every year.

“The figure shows that China’s effort to cut greenhouse emissions and its actual effect are second to none,” the envoy said.

Sorry to quibble, but we don’t know this program’s “actual effect” yet.  The number given is simply a projection and assumes successful achievement of the goal.  Caijing, as we previously noted, has reported that some Chinese analysts do not believe the goal will be met, and there are serious questions about China’s energy efficiency numbers (see sustainablejohn’s comment to yesterday’s post).  It is best not to count our chickens before they hatch, especially when those involved in tallying up the eggs are reporting figures that don’t make sense.

Also note that we are meant to gaze upon the millions of tons saved and be awed by their sheer size.  Of course, when we happen to read in the foreign press about the huge size of China’s actual carbon emissions (to my knowledge no Chinese domestic news organization has ever reported that China is the number one emission source in the world), we are admonished that we are simpletons if we are astounded by how large they are because, after all, China’s a big country, and if you look at the total on a per capita basis it really isn’t that big.  Whenever the topic is China’s emissions reductions efforts, the amount of carbon emissions saved is never expressed on a per capita basis.

I’m sure I won’t be able to go cold turkey on China climate change articles, but I do promise that I will no longer report on stories that simply reiterate the points with which everyone is by now familiar.  I can at least spare you the mind-numbing repetition.