|
Curbing global warming
Lan Xinzhen
IACCORDING to figures from the State Environmental Protection
Administration, China’s energy consumption per 10,000 yuan ($1,342) of
gross domestic product (GDP) went down from the equivalent of 2.68 tons
of coal in 1990 to 1.43 tons in 2005. Over these 15 years, China saved
energy totaling 800 million tons of coal equivalent, which led to a
reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 1.8 billion tons. Over the same
period, China has expanded the plantation of trees, which have absorbed
5 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Forests absorb carbon dioxide at a
rate of 500 million tons every year. That means that without China’s
forceful measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions, at least 7 billion
tons more carbon dioxide would have been expelled into the atmosphere
every year.
Practical measures
Although China is the second biggest national greenhouse gas emitter
only after the United States, China’s per-capita carbon dioxide
discharge is 3.65 tons, only 87 percent of the world average level. In
2002, China ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which came into effect in 2005.
Although developing countries like China were not included in any
numerical limitations of the protocol, the country still takes effective
measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and offset the effects of
expelled carbon dioxide.
Gao Guangsheng, an official of the Department of Resource Conservation
and Environmental Protection of the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC), said the government is fighting against global
warming through direct and indirect measures. Direct measures include
closing down or conducting technical reforms of small factories that
cause heavy pollution or have high energy consumption levels. Indirect
measures include planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. In 2006 alone,
the Central Government invested a total of 25.6 million yuan ($3.4
million) in energy preservation and reduction of carbon dioxide.
The government has attached enormous attention to transforming economic
growth models and adjusting economic structures, and regards lowering
energy consumption, clean production and preventing industrial pollution
as important elements of industrial policy. China has also embarked on
improving its energy mix through developing low- carbon energies and
renewable energies. Among the composition of China’s primary energy
consumption, the proportion of coal dropped from 76.2 percent in 1990 to
68.9 percent in 2005. Over the same period, the proportions of
petroleum, natural gas and hydropower rose from 16.6 percent, 2.1
percent and 5.1 percent to 21 percent, 2.9 percent and 7.2 percent
respectively. In 2006 the consumption of renewable energy in China
reached 167 million tons of coal equivalent, accounting for 7.5 percent
of total energy consumption. This equals reducing carbon dioxide
emissions by 380 million tons.
The Chinese Government has set a goal of reducing energy consumption per
unit of GDP by 20 percent and reducing major pollutants by 10 percent
between 2006 and 2010. In order to achieve this goal, the government
plans to close down small thermal power units of 50 million kw. The goal
for 2007 of shutting down units of 10 million kw has been accomplished.
China is also actively developing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM),
a flexible financing instrument defined in the Kyoto Protocol that
enables developing countries to benefit from the reduction of emissions
of harmful greenhouse gases and promotion of sustainable development.
According to the latest release from the Office of the National
Coordination Committee on Climate Change under the NDRC, the NDRC had
ratified a total of 788 CDM programs by September 4.
Chinese CDM programs include exploring new types of energy, energy
preservation projects, the recycling of methane, decomposition of
harmful greenhouse gas trifluoromethane and finding new substitute
fuels. The NDRC has listed exploring new energies, developing renewable
energies, energy preservation, enhancing energy efficiency and expanding
the recycling of methane and coal-seam gas as key CDM projects. Besides
measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, China is putting
even more effort into planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. China has
a total of 54 million hectares of man-made forests, which ranks top in
the world. Due to the measures of planting new trees and protecting
existing forests, China’s forest area has achieved substantial growth.
The country has maintained 175 million hectares of forests, which covers
about 18.21 percent of the land.
According to a study by Chinese environmental experts, the trees China
planted between 1980 and 2005 have absorbed a total of 3.06 billion tons
of carbon dioxide; the forests are still absorbing carbon dioxide at a
rate of 500 million tons per year. Attending the 15th Economic Leaders’
Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in Sydney
in September, Chinese President Hu Jintao advocated the promotion of
China’s experience of planting trees to curb global warming, which
received media attention and positive comments from other countries.
China has announced plans to raise its forest coverage rate from the
current 18.2 percent to 20 percent by 2010.
In the joint proposal between China and the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) issued at the China-ASEAN Forestry Cooperation
Forum on October 30, both sides agreed to reduce the felling of trees
and increase forest coverage in order to slow down global warming. The
Chinese Government’s keen attention to global warming led to the
establishment of a leading panel to work on responding to climate change
under the State Council, headed by Premier Wen Jiabao, in June this
year. China was also the first developing country to issue a national
action plan on climate change, which specifies the country’s specific
goals, basic principles, key areas and policies for curbing climate
change by 2010.
The Chinese Government is also combining its efforts in curbing climate
change with the implementation of sustainable development strategies and
the construction of a resource-saving, environment-friendly and
innovation-oriented society. “As a developing country, China is
shouldering more and more responsibility in curbing climate change and
reducing greenhouse gases,” said Gao.
Goals for next five years
China will reduce the emission of nearly 1 billion tons of carbon
dioxide every year by 2010, about 2.5 times of the current capacity of
400 million tons. Through promotion of energy preservation technologies,
energy consumption per unit of GDP in 2010 will be 20 percent lower than
that of 2005, which can be transformed into reduction of carbon dioxide
emissions. Policies leveraging the development of metallurgy,
construction material and chemical industries have been issued to
develop recycling and raise energy efficiency, such as stabilizing the
emission of nitrous oxide in production at the level of 2005 by 2010.
The government has taken measures to expand the use of biogas and
control the growing speed of methane emissions. “The key measure is to
overhaul the energy mix,” said Gao. China is one of the few countries to
rely on coal as its leading fuel source. Of China’s total primary energy
consumption in 2005, totaling 2.233 billion tons of coal equivalent,
coal consumption made up 68.9 percent, petroleum 21 percent and other
energies including natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power
and solar power occupied 10.1 percent.
In contrast, of the global primary energy consumption of the same year,
coal consumption accounted for merely 27.8 percent, petroleum 36.4
percent and natural gas, hydropower and nuclear power totaled 35.8
percent. China’s heavy reliance on coal consumption has made the
reduction of carbon dioxide emissions a particularly daunting challenge
for China. China’s national action plan on climate change stated how the
reduction of 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 can be
realized. The exploitation of hydropower could reduce emissions by 500
million tons; the development of nuclear power could cut emissions by 50
million tons; upgrading thermal power generation facilities and
dismissing small thermal power units could reduce emissions of 110
million tons; the expanded use of coal-seam gas could reduce emissions
of 200 million tons; the development of bio-energy could reduce
emissions by 30 million tons; and the development of wind power, solar
power, terrestrial heat and wave power could reduce carbon dioxide
emissions by another 60 million tons.
The Central Government has encouraged and designed incentives for
financial institutions loaning money to projects of environmental
protection and pollution reduction as well as offering taxation
incentives to these projects. As for high-pollution factories and
high-energy consuming-companies, the State Environmental Protection
Administration and NDRC have advised financial institutions against
loaning money to these companies.
Seeking international support
Gao said China’s backward production of energy and low efficiency in
energy use are the two reasons for China’s colossal greenhouse gas
emissions. Technologies in energy exploitation, transformation and
transportation in China lag far behind advanced industrial countries.
Meanwhile, backward production facilities still account for a large
percentage of China’s key industrial sectors. For example, energy
consumption per ton of steel in small companies is about 200 kg of coal
equivalent larger than that of big companies that produce both iron and
steel. Therefore, technological upgrades will play an important role in
China’s efforts to curb climate change. China also badly needs
international technological cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. According to the National Climate Change Program, China needs
technical support on atmosphere observation, ocean and terrestrial
ecosystem protection, earth resource and ocean resource satellite remote
sensing, climate change monitoring and testing and calculation in
climate models. China is in need of international cooperation in these
fields.
China is engaged in a series of large-scale infrastructure construction
projects, which demand the installment of greenhouse gas reduction
technologies, such as high-efficiency low-pollution thermal power
technology, nuclear power technology and renewable energy technology.
The failure to install these technologies would lead to high emissions
of greenhouse gases from these facilities in the coming decades. The
introduction of technologies in these fields from abroad will greatly
boost China’s capacity to curb climate change, said Gao.
(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)
Lebanon’s version of Russian
roulette
Claude Salhani
IT’S coming down to the wire
with just a few days left before President Emile Lahoud’s already
extended mandate runs out. The cut-off date is November 21 and Lebanon’s
pro-independence members of parliament are playing a Lebanese version of
Russian roulette. But instead of a revolver loaded with a single bullet,
this game is played with car bombs and professional assassins. Gathered
in a Beirut hotel under heavy guard a number of parliamentarians,
members of the pro-democracy March 14 Movement turned to the US Congress
for help. In a November 7 letter addressed to both the US House and
Senate the Lebanese lawmakers wrote: “When we signed up for grass-roots
democracy our names were added to a list of those marked for death. We
don’t seek your sympathy. We merely seek your support in ensuring that
the Lebanese can ultimately share in the simple but precious values that
you dearly cherish and we are still struggling to achieve.”
Six of the March 14 legislators have already been murdered in recent
months and understandably the others fear for their lives. “It is from
our enforced imprisonment in a Beirut hotel (to avoid our number
dwindling even further), that we draft and send this letter to the
democratic representatives of the free world,” write the Lebanese
parliamentarians. The Nov 21 deadline set by the constitution to elect a
new president is rapidly approaching and the two opposing camps, the
pro-independence, anti-Syrian, March 14 Movement who enjoys the backing
of the United States and France, and on the other side General Michel
Aoun and Hezbollah, with Syrian and Iranian support, are unable to agree
on a single candidate. Complicating the matter further is the speaker of
the House, Nabih Berri, who needs to keep the parliament open so that
its members can convene and vote. This has not been the case. France,
the former colonial master of Syria and Lebanon, has been trying to
negotiate a settlement to the crisis. French President Nicolas Sarkozy,
who had promised upon his election to stand by Lebanon, has dispatched
two high-ranking diplomats to Damascus to ask Syria to lay off Lebanon.
But at the best of times the Middle East’s politics are Machiavellian to
say the least. Syria’s President Bashar Assad promised the French envoys
he would stay out of Lebanese internal affairs if Lebanon’s Maronite
Patriarch would select a list of names to send to the parliament. And so
the waiting game goes on.
“Let’s say that’s why we’re waiting for the magic word from the
patriarch,” Walid Joumblatt, a member of parliament, leader of the Druze
community and one of the main figures of the March 14 Movement told me
during a telephone conversation. The patriarch, however, under pressure
from both camps, seems hesitant to play the role of King Solomon. Some
names have already been put forward only to be dismissed; they are seen
as either too pro-Syrian by the March 14 Movement, or too much
anti-Syrian by Hezbollah and their allies. “Nothing called an
independent Lebanon seems acceptable to Syria,” said a Lebanese member
of parliament who spoke on condition his name not be revealed. One name
being thrown about is that of the president of the Maronite League, a
banker called Joseph Tarrabay.
In the meantime tension between the two camps has reached a new climax
when in a speech last Sunday Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan
Nasrallah asked of President Lahoud, who is very much in the pro-Syrian
camp, to do anything he can to prevent “the killers and the thieves (of
the March 14 Movement) to achieve a quorum of 50 plus one,” the number
that would give them the majority in the House to elect a new president.
“This time it was a direct threat,” said a member of the anti-Syrian
movement who requested not to be identified. Druze leader Walid
Joumblatt qualified what is going on in Lebanon today as the “last
battle of the Maronites.” It could also be the last battle of a free
Lebanon. In their plea for help to the US Congress the Lebanese
parliamentarians warn that the 2005 Cedar Revolution “is in danger of
becoming a historical footnote.”
Any democratic gains they say “are being slowly eroded by Iran and
Syria, who are determined to snuff out the new democratic ideal. “If
they are successful, Lebanon, the only bastion of democracy in the Arab
world, will cease to exist and the consequences for a region, where you
are fighting to fight back the tide of religious and radical extremism,
will be catastrophic.” Preoccupied with the Middle East peace conference
due to be held in Annapolis sometime this month — and there are less
than about 15 days left — the Bush administration already has its hands
full. The one bright light at the end of this long dark tunnel would be
if Damascus was invited to the peace conference — and accepted the
invitation — to discuss the outstanding issues plaguing the region
today. That would include Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights and
Syria’s interference in Lebanon. But this is a tall order on a rather
short notice. It will take more than 15 days to put together an agenda
of that magnitude.—Khaleej Times
Iran’s quest for security & stability
Manuchehr Mottaki
A Major shortcoming in today’s
world is the persistence of a zero-sum sense of geopolitics. The world
expected something different in the post-Cold War era to promote peace
and stability. Instead, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, momentum swung
toward a “global war on terror,” which, in practice, became the
rationale for maintaining a Cold War mentality and for supporting
strategies of preemptive war and regime change. These strategies have
intensified instability and the threat of international terrorism.
Consider my country, Iran, which has not invaded a country in 250 years.
After decades of struggle against dictatorship and foreign domination,
we secured our freedom and independence in 1979 by establishing a
political system of our own choosing. Instead of establishing friendly
relations with Iran based on this new reality, the United States has
consistently sought to restore its domination, even providing massive
diplomatic, financial and military support to the late former Iraqi
president, Saddam Hussein, in his war against my country during the
1980s. The current dispute over Iran’s peaceful and legal nuclear
program is part of this pattern, replete with unfounded accusations,
double standards, and moral and legal inconsistency, all hidden behind
the alleged threat of proliferation.
Iran’s peaceful nuclear program originated in the late 1960s and in the
1970s. Iran’s energy demand will exceed its supply, possibly reducing or
even eliminating its oil export capacity in the near future. Thus, Iran
urgently needs to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power by 2020. As
long ago as 1973, the U.S. government saw that Iran would need nuclear
power. Indeed, the U.S. expected that Iran would be capable of
generating 20,000 megawatts by 1994. Despite the encouragement of Iran’s
civil nuclear program by the U.S., Britain, Germany and France, they all
ultimately reneged on their contractual commitments after our revolution
in 1979. Today, some of these governments are even questioning Iran’s
need for nuclear energy — a matter that was obvious to them 30 years
ago.
Iran does not need nuclear weapons to protect its regional interests,
and such weapons have no place in Iran’s security strategy. It seeks to
win the confidence of its neighbors and has remained within the confines
of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The latest report from the
International Atomic Energy Agency has verified that there has been no
diversion of Iran’s civil nuclear program to weapons development. Iran
has even proposed regional and multinational participation in its
uranium enrichment facilities — only to be met by resounding silence
from the Western powers. Meanwhile, U.S. policy toward nuclear
nonproliferation and the NPT regime is a case in point of double
standards and a lack of sensitivity to other countries’ security
concerns. While the U.S. seeks to use unilateral and unlawful pressure
to preclude Iran’s legitimate right to peaceful nuclear energy, it has
assisted in developing Israel’s nuclear capabilities. Indeed, the U.S.
has acted as a buffer to insulate Israel — whose prime minister has
boasted about its nuclear weapons — from international scrutiny,
ignoring calls by Iran and other countries to create a Mideast
nuclear-free zone.—Japan Times
|
