It's long been said said that China was adding one new coal power plant per week to its grid. But the real news is worse: China is completing two new coal plants per week. If China's carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth, the country's carbon dioxide emissions will reach 8 gigatons a year by 2030, which is equal to the entire world's CO2 production today. If the Chinese economy steps into our carbon footprint, all other greenhouse gas reduction efforts will be for naught.
Alexis Madrigal, Wired, 8 February 2008
China has one of the largest coal reserves in the world, and coal accounts for 67% of its primary energy use, compared with 24% for the world average. China is currently bringing two additional coal-fired power plants to the electric power grid every week. In a hypothetical scenario in which carbon intensity keeps pace with a GDP growth rate of 7%, by 2030, China would be emitting as much as the world as a whole is today (8 GtC/year).
Ning Zeng et al., Science, 8 February 2008
Faced with electricity shortages in more than half the country, the Communist Party responded with an old-style mobilization campaign. Last week, President Hu Jintao visited the Tashan mine and ordered all state-owned mines to produce more coal, and produce it faster, in order to guarantee supply for power plants in the south.
The New York Times, 9 February 2008
China has long been a huge supplier of coal to itself and the rest of the world. But in the first half of last year, it imported more than it exported for the first time, setting off a near-doubling of most coal prices around the world. For the world, which uses coal for about 40% of its electricity, the result is similar to what happened after China became a net importer of oil in 1993.
The Wall Street Journal, 12 February 2008
Gosh, SJT, what an insight. The problem with your simplistic, indeed, moronic pronunciamento is that you are implying that they are mutually exclusive. As if any modification to the environment for economic purposes is tantamount to the total destruction of the environment.
The test of your intellect, and anyone else's for that matter, rests on one's capacity to discern the nuances in a number of inputs and variables. And for the record, you just demonstrated your incapacity to discern any nuance in only two variables.
Readers will notice how yourself and Ender have avoided any discussion on the actual realistic emission levels for a developed China and India (the topic) like a French Hells Angel avoids a hot bath.
"If you don't have a job and can't afford a place to live, you'll get a close up look of the environment because you'll be living out in it."
Lets get one thing perfectly straight.
The economy totally depends on having an environment. No environment, no economy.
cdn.infidel - "If you want to live in the woods and walk to work(if you work) then feel free but stop telling me I have to return to the "Existance" my great grandparents had to scrape out for themselves."
Never said anything of the sort. It is just at the moment we can put economics ahead of the environment however the circumstances may change in the future when it is impossible to put do this.
Good point, infidel. Both my Grandfathers spent the best two decades of their working lives complying with a compulsory requirement to get rid (cut down and burn) over 100,000 tonnes of high quality forest as a condition of their grant of land title.
And it is pretty hard to feed a family when you share your life with a nightmare masquerading as informed government policy. And then came the great depression.
Ender - "For instance if economics and politics had taken second place to the environment"
If you don't have a job and can't afford a place to live, you'll get a close up look of the environment because you'll be living out in it.
I prefer to have a nicely heated home and a car to get to work. If you want to live in the woods and walk to work(if you work) then feel free but stop telling me I have to return to the "Existance" my great grandparents had to scrape out for themselves.
This issue is covered in more depth at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/
It points out that the Chinese are not even bound to follow a Japanese emissions footprint at 9.6tCO2/capita when their purchase of French nuclear power plants makes it clear that they will most likely achieve fully developed status under the Swedish (5.41t/capita), Swiss (5.58t/capita) or French (5.99t/capita) model.
So why would anyone but the barking mad bother to assume that China and India will conform to a US emissions footprint?