China and CO2

The news about Lawrence Livermore and the quest for new technologies (below) comes none too soon as the following report from China indicates.

A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

China to Take the Lead in CO2

Of course the western industrialized nations are almost wholly responsible for the state we are in so there isn’t much satisfaction in pointing fingers at the Chinese while yelling “you did it! You did it!”

A few headlines recently have played up China’s new drive to efficiency and resource savings. But there is less to them, it seems, than meets the eye.

China has grown by 10 percent or more in each of the past four years, becoming the world’s fourth-largest economy.

But it is also home to five of the world’s 10 most polluted cities; groundwater is tainted in nine out of 10 cities.

“We need to greatly improve the quality and efficiency of economic growth. We must attach greater importance to saving energy and resources, protecting the environment and using land intensively …” the premier said.

Yet Wen conspicuously made no mention of any drive to combat global warming, even though China is on course to overtake the United States as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases by 2009.

And while stressing a long-term commitment to cut energy use per unit of output, his speech omitted a numerical goal for 2007. China fell well short in 2006 of its target of a 4 percent cut.

China’s Wen Stresses Green Growth