WILL CHINA WILL HELP FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE?
Airpocalypse Now: China and Climate Change
Bill Powell, December 3, 2015 (Newsweek)
“…China’s ‘airpocalypse’ is intimately linked to its huge and politically powerful [coal] industry…As the Paris conference drew nearer, the U.S. publicly heaped praise on China for the targets it has set to reduce CO2 emissions—reducing their growth and then moving to outright cuts around 2030…[But a 2014 Pew Research Center survey found the most pressing issues to the Chinese people were corruption and pollution and climate change] didn’t make the list…Xi has launched an aggressive and unprecedented campaign against corrupt officials…But it’s important to remember that the Chinese government’s goals do not jibe completely with the anti-coal desires of the climate change movement…[R]enewable energy plus nuclear (including hydro) accounts for just 10 percent of China’s overall electricity generation. By 2020, it plans to raise that to 15 percent…[but New Energy] and electric cars need a new electricity grid, a so-called smart grid that can store energy when it’s not needed and have it ready when it is. China’s grid [is reliable and brings electricity to the entire country]…But it is a dumb grid, and it will take a long time to change that…There is still powerful resistance to economic and environmental change. What was true in Pittsburgh, Germany’s Ruhr Valley or the environmental catastrophe that was the Soviet Union is now true throughout China: Powerful economic interests dig in their heels…” click here for more
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