THE DIRTY SECRET OF CHINA'S ECONOMY

The 2008 Beijing Olympics is being billed as one of those glorious defining moments in history that will signal China's arrival as an economic power. But what if the global media pack and the millions of tourists who descend on China two years from now take away a less-than-flattering impression of the Middle Kingdom?

Yes, China is a remarkable growth story. But it is also fast becoming an ecological wasteland, home to world-class smog, acid rain, polluted rivers and lakes, and deforestation. Environmental problems play a role in the death of some 300,000 Chinese people each year, according to World Bank estimates.

China's torrid growth statisticsthe mainland clocked 10%-plus growth in the first quarteralso mask the huge economic costs of this evolving environmental crisis. On June 5, China's State Environmental Protection Administration [SEPA] issued a report that the mainland's pollution scourge costs the country roughly $200 billion a year, or some 10% in gross domestic product, from lost work productivity, health problems, and government outlays. That is a staggering admission.

DEEP IMPACT

China, of course, isn't the first high-speed developing economy to grapple with the tradeoffs between prosperity that lifts millions out of poverty and environmental damage that degrades living standards [see BusinessWeek.com, 2/27/06, "Is Beijing Greedy for Oil?"]. Think of Japan in the 1960s. What's different is China's outsized impact on the global environment.

China's economy is only about one-fifth the size of the U.S, but is already the second biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, second only to the U.S. China's emissions jumped 33% during a 10-year period ended in 2002, according to the latest World Bank figures. A miasma of dirty air from China is spreading across East Asia and even reaching the West Coast of the U.S.

There is no denying that Chinese President Hu Jintao's government takes the problem seriously. Not only is it bad for the mainland's international image, but it could be an explosive political issue later in the decade if left unresolved.

RENEGADE POLLUTERS

Pan Yue, vice-minister of SEPA, predicted last summer at an environmental conference in Beijing that "the pollution load of China will quadruple by 2020" if nothing is done. Some 20% of the population lives in "severely polluted" areas, according to SEPA estimates, and 70% of the country's rivers and lakes are in grim shape, figures the World Bank.

Changing all this will require a tremendous amount of political focus by Beijing. It will need to crack down on environmental renegades inside Chinese industry, encourage a move from high-sulfur coal as the mainland's primary energy source, and push to secure the most environmentally friendly technologies from abroad [see BusinessWeek.com, 8/22/05, "A Big Dirty Growth Engine"].

The "policy elite has realized that China, with its huge scale of economic development and emissions, cannot consume energy and pollute the earth the way traditional economies have done in the past," says Wenran Jiang, director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, Canada, who made a presentation on climate change in early June to Chinese and World Bank officials....

PLAN FOR NUCLEAR

While China can't do much about its ravenous energy demand, it could do a far better job of shifting to cleaner technologies and using its power more efficiently. China consumes more than three times the world energy average to produce one dollar of gross domestic product4.7 times the average for the U.S., 7.7 times the average for Germany, and 11.5 times the average for Japan [see BusinessWeek.com, 4/11/05, "China's Wasteful Ways"].

Beijing has mapped out a plan that calls for hiking reliance on natural gas from 3% to 10% by 2020. Plants fired by gas burn fuel twice as efficiently as turbines fired by coal, which now accounts for two-thirds of China's fuel. The plan also calls for building 30 new nuclear reactors. Cummins (CMI) imports and makes diesel engines for mainland buses that are 30% more efficient than gas engines.

Royal Dutch Shell Group (RD) is licensing technology to fertilizer plants that converts coal into synthetic gas, which burns more efficiently. General Electric (GE) is making a killing selling gas turbines. And both GE and Veolia, of France, are marketing technologies that will harness the methane gas produced from decomposing garbage and sewage, as well as the huge amounts of gas that escape from China's coal mines.

MSNBC, 19 June 2006






SHOCK, HORROR! CHINA REPORTS SHRINKING DESERTS

The Greenies won't like it. Deserts are "natural"

China's deserts are shrinking annually at a rate of about 3,000 square miles. A senior forestry official said that the new finding sharply contrasts with the 4,000 square mile annual expansion at the end of the 20th century, the official news agency Xinhua reported. Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration said data showed the desertification that started in China in the late 1990s has been "primarily brought under control." Addressing the Beijing International Conference on Women and Desertification, Zhu said that although China is much more aware of the problem than in the past, "the work in this regard remains tough." Chinese officials say desertification affects the lives of 400 million people and causes annual economic losses of 54 billion yuan ($6.75 billion). The Chinese government spends about 2 billion yuan ($250 million) a year fighting desertification.

Source






"WORLD CO2 EMISSIONS TO RISE 75% BY 2030"

Global emissions of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide will rise 75 percent from 2003 to 2030, with much of the growth coming from coal burning in developing countries, the U.S. government forecast on Tuesday. Developing countries are growing more quickly than industrialized economies, whose growth "tends to be in less energy-intensive sectors," the report said. While the United States is the world's leading emitter of CO2, its emissions growth rate will soon be surpassed by China and India.

Global emissions of CO2 will hit 43.7 billion tonnes in 2030, up from 25 billion tonnes in 2003, the Energy Information Administration said in its annual forecast. By 2025 global CO2 emissions could hit 40.05 billion tonnes annually, up 0.03 percent from the forecast issued last year, said the EIA, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy. Last year's report did not look as far ahead as 2030.....

Humans cause much of the buildup of CO2 by burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and the most CO2-intensive fuel, coal. Coal burning, which is growing in China and India, and to a lesser extent in the United States, could overtake oil as the largest fuel source of CO2 emissions after 2015, the EIA said.

The forecast did not include potential effects of CO2 reduction plans, including the international pact known as the Kyoto Protocol, saying the long-term impact of such plans are not yet known....

DEVELOPING ASIA TO SURPASS NORTH AMERICA

The report said that in four years, CO2 emissions in rapidly developing countries in Asia, such as China and India, will surpass those from North America. In 2003, CO2 emissions of 6.8 billion tonnes from North America were about 12 percent higher than those in developing Asia, a far more populous region, according to the EIA. By 2010, that changes. Developing Asian countries will emit about 9.1 billion tonnes of CO2, surpassing North American emissions by about 21 percent, according to the EIA.

Emissions from North America should average 1.3 percent growth per year from 2003 to 2030 and hit 9.7 billion tonnes by 2030, the EIA said. In developing Asian countries, emissions should average 3.6 percent growth to reach 16 billion tonnes by 2030, the report said. Total U.S. emissions have risen by 15.8 percent from 1990 to 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said.

In Russia and eastern Europe, which experienced an economic downturn late last century, CO2 emissions won't return to 1990 levels until after 2025, according to the EIA. Emissions of CO2 in developed Asian countries will rise an average 0.9 percent per year from 2003 to 2030 to 2.6 billion tonnes, while developed European countries will build an average 0.7 percent per year to 5.1 billion tonnes over the same time, the EIA said.

More here






Australia: Business helps preserve the natural environment



Recruitment king Geoff Morgan is one of growing number of millionaires who are helping to bankroll a fund that's at the forefront of an environmental putsch. But unlike past environmental battles where activists take on bulldozers and police, the Australian Bush Heritage Fund relies on suits and big business to quietly buy up large tracts of land and establish environmental reserves.

Donors such as Morgan, the managing director of Talent2 and co-founder of the recruitment company Morgan & Banks, have helped Bush Heritage become the most active and largest land conservancy group in Australia. It now owns 24 reserves tallying almost 700,000ha and worth $14million across Australia. Collectively, these acquisitions protect more than 158 species of threatened plants and animals and more than 63 threatened vegetation communities. Its latest acquisition is a 63,000ha reserve called Boolcoomatta, five hours from Adelaide and adjacent to the newly formed Bimbowrie National Park.

Bush Heritage chief executive Doug Humann won't divulge the names of his donors but the list includes some leading names in Australian business. Among the influential cohort are Carol Schwartz, a director of Highpoint Property Group and president of the Melbourne International Arts Festival board; Simon Mordant, joint chief executive of Caliburn Partnership; Graham Turner, founder and managing director of Flight Centre; Louise Sylvan, chief executive of the Australian Consumers' Association and deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission; and Helen Lynch, deputy chairwoman of Pacific Brands, former chairwoman of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a non-executive director of Southcorp and Westpac Bank.

Corporations that support Bush Heritage through payroll donations are Allens Arthur Robinson, BlueScope Steel, Goldman Sachs JBWere, Integral Energy, Perpetual Trustees, UBS and Westpac. Donations of $2 or more are tax-deductible, property gifts valued at more than $5000 are deductible. Humann says the fund relies on "a lot of people who give us smallish sums of money or regular sums". "We've got a few people, foundations and trusts who give us quite substantial one-off sums and there are others who have pledged over a number of years," he says. "Their pledge might be for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

Bush Heritage is also finalising a gift of $1million a year over the next three years. "That's the largest donation I've been associated with." Humann says. "It is the result of an individual who has established a private fund."

Morgan says his financial contribution to Bush Heritage has been substantial but adds "giving is not just a financial thing. I'd like to think that with Bush Heritage I've come up with ideas, as I know other people have, to help them be more successful." Morgan, together with business partner Andrew Banks, formed recruitment powerhouse Morgan & Banks in 1985 and pushed sales growth to more than $700 million a year. It became Australia's most successful recruitment firm before being sold, bought back, floated and then sold again, with the pair pocketing an estimated $1 billion.

Morgan says his five-year involvement with Bush Heritage is not about fertilising his own business opportunities but "helping this organisation become as good as they can be". "People give money and they think that's great," he says. "They wash their hands of it and then move on and, you know, start standing under the shower for 15 minutes. It is about who you want to be as a person. It is not how other people measure you. It is how you measure yourself when you look in the mirror every day. I'm not worried about what other people think of me, I'm worried about what I think of me."

Morgan says he is not like his former neighbour, HIH boss Ray Williams, who "used all of the public company money to make himself look good. For Andrew (Banks) and I, every dollar we give is our own money, not anybody else's. "I think the Australian approach is about getting on and doing it. It is not a personal marketing campaign. That's making you out to be bigger than the cause. I don't like that sort of philosophy. "I think you need to have a mentality where you have a gift bank in your mind. And I like to make sure that I'm in credit all the time on the giving side."

Morgan says he agrees with Bush Heritage's pragmatic approach. "The more private enterprise leads the way rather than just relying on government departments, the better off we'd be, particularly in environmental terms. "It's a negative and small view that we have to worry about the economy. If the environment is stuffed we won't worry about the economy. I'm scared about the lack of action in this country. We lead the world in many areas, why don't we lead the world in the environment? More people need to get angry about it."

Morgan's entree into Bush Heritage came via Schwartz who donates both time and money. "Our support is financial and I guess my support is in the context of introducing Doug Humann to people like myself who have an awareness of what the issues are," Morgan says. "I wouldn't say that it (her financial commitment) is major in the context of the sorts of donations that Bush Heritage receives but from my point of view it was substantial. I always give according to what my means are and what my priorities are and there are lots of competing priorities. "For me it is a lot harder to give hours as opposed to writing a cheque. I can write a cheque for $500 easier than giving an afternoon of my time. What I have done is facilitated many meetings and introductions. That, I think, is more valuable than my financial contribution."

Schwartz riles at the suggestion she is helping to establish an influential business network that will enhance personal business opportunities via the environment. "I hate the word networking," Schwartz says. "I prefer the word facilitation because networking has connotations that people want something out of the relationship. All I'm doing is facilitating an introduction for them to be able to develop that interest that I think is waiting there just to be ignited."

Schwartz, like Morgan, says the people she introduces to Bush Heritage are not "looking for an opportunity other than having a real interest in the Australian environment and in creating a sustainable Australian environment. They really want to know how they can do that. "I actually don't think that with an organisation like Bush Heritage and the sort of people one introduces to that organisation, that those alternative motives are there. It is just too easy to go along to a pure business lunch and have that sort of opportunity."

Schwartz describes her first visit to a reserve in western Queensland called Carnarvon Station as "remarkable". "I have never been in that part of Queensland before. As you drive to Carnarvon Station you actually go through this area where forests have been felled for grazing. I've never seen that before. I thought I was driving through a nuclear wasteland. It was just horrible. It is really scary stuff. Then we get to Carnarvon Station which is actually like an oasis in the middle of this nuclear desert." Schwartz says she will remain committed to Bush Heritage because "they are involved in an issue that is really important for my children and grandchildren, and that they are effective and will be able to deliver outcomes".

In the past 15 years landcare groups have grown from an estimated 200 community-based groups to more than 4000, involving about 120,000 volunteers across Australia. There are now more than 20 million hectares in conservation reserves. Increasingly, these reserves are private holdings. Green senator Bob Brown started the trend by establishing Bush Heritage in 1990 with the purchase of two small parcels of land, Liffey River and Drys Bluff, adjacent to the Tasmanian World Heritage area. Brown modelled Bush Heritage on the US's The Nature Conservancy, one of the world's biggest environmental organisations. The Nature Conservancy is the richest conservation group in the world, with total revenue in 2000 of more than $US784 million ($1.070million) and assets of about $US2.8billion. Then as now, Bush Heritage relied on a network of influential people to raise funds for its first two purchases. Brown called on friends including Judy Henderson, John Williamson, Phillip Adams, Jenny Kee, Jo Vallentine and Roger Woodward. More often than not, Bush Heritage donors never see the reserves. Morgan says he trusts the fund to manage and preserve its reserves and hopes to visit in the future.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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