China announces plan to single-handedly finish off the climate

[bananas]

"In short, from 2007 to 2015, China will increase its coal production by an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire coal consumption of the United States — an amount that surpasses all of the coal consumed today in Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America."

China announces plan to single-handedly finish off the climate

The Canberra Times/AFP has the alarming news:

China is aiming to increase its coal production by about 30 per cent by 2015 to meet its energy needs, the Government has announced, in a move likely to fuel concerns over global warming.

(Note to Canberra Times: Some statements are so obvious you can skip the journalistic hedging.)

Land and Resources Ministry chief planner Hu Cunzhi said the Government planned to increase annual output to more than 3.3 billion tonnes by 2015.

That is up from the 2.54 billion tonnes produced in 2007, according to the ministry.

In short, from 2007 to 2015, China will increase its coal production by an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire coal consumption of the United States — an amount that surpasses all of the coal consumed today in Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America.

Such is the legacy of 8 years of the Bush administration blocking all national and international action on climate change, and indeed actively working to undermine international negotiations by creating a parallel do-nothing track for countries like China. As Chinese officials have told me, we gave them the cover to accelerate emissions growth.

Some might claim a different president would never have been able to get China on a different path. But if Al Gore had been elected picked by the Supreme Court in 2000, I assert that China would not be planning for its 2015 coal production to be triple that of current U.S. coal production.

Changing China’s rapacious coal plans will arguably be Obama’s single greatest challenge in terms of preserving a livable climate and thus the health and well-being of future generations and thus any chance at a positive legacy for his presidency (see “What will make Obama a great president, Part 2: A climate deal with China”

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more: http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/09/china-announces-plan-to-single-handedly-destroy-the-climate/

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. China has never treated the environmental issues with seriousness

[Phred42]

2. And they never will

[Skink]

3. What is it about clean coal people don't understand?

[Nihil]

12. That's like asking ...

"What is it about Tinkerbell's wings people don't understand?".

If they are sufficiently disconnected from reality as to think that
"clean coal" exists, they aren't going to take much notice of people
saying otherwise ...

:shrug:

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. How about the world going back to the boycott China policy

of pre-Nixon?

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

6. It would never work.

They have their hooks in a good chunk of the global economy now. To remove them would damage a number of countries.

[The_Casual_Observer]

11. I don't mean play fair. Just cut them the hell off. Don't pay them shit

Ignore them, like everybody used to.

[Double T]

5. Won't be long till we can breath-in the soot from the good ol' chinese air.

When will we wake up and cutoff the damn chinese destruction of our environment, economy and financial system. Looks like Abraham Lincoln Obama will have to free the slave and lower wage workers from their american corporate masters.

[patrice]

7. Necessity IS the Mother of Invention. nt

[NNadir]

8. Oh I don't know about that...

It's pretty funny when people who live in a country where the average power consumption is 12,000 watts start whining impetuously and stamping their feet about people who live on 1/12 that.

I note, with due contempt, that China's coal consuption is 22 exajoules, whereas China's is 55 exajoules whereas the US is 23 exajoules.

The population of China is more than 5 times larger than ours, and they don't use nearly as much dangerous natural gas as we do.

The fact is that the most egregrious use of coal is the per capita use here where flaky little daydreaming anti-nukes pull lint out of their navels trying to destroy the only expandable exajoule scale form of energy while dreaming that the last 50 years of talking big about weeny renewables plants is "environmental."

Fucking little self-absorbed brats: Do as I say, not as I do.

China has 11 operating nuclear reactors - some of them CANDUs - 7 under construction and ten more about to start construction.

Chinese nuclear plans predict 160 GWe by 2030, giving it about 50 exajoules, or half of current US use for all energy with ZERO climate change impact.

[Hardrada]

9. What is an "exajoule?"

[Jim Lane]

10. Let's tone down the rah-rah pro-nuke boosterism with a dose of reality

Your assertion that nuclear power has "ZERO climate change impact" is not supported by the facts. You conveniently ignore all the ancillary processes (such as uranium mining) that are necessary to the generation of power.

Also, of course, climate change is an important problem but it's not the only important problem. Nukes carry significant negatives in other areas.