China unveils Copenhagen targets

China has unveiled its first firm target for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, two weeks before a global summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

Beijing said it would aim to reduce its "carbon intensity" by 40-45% by the year 2020, compared with 2005 levels.
Carbon intensity, China's preferred measurement, is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of GDP.
But our correspondent says it does not mean China's overall levels of carbon dioxide will start falling.

 This is the truth about China that we really need to focus on: they are not going to stop growing in the next 20 or so years and expecting anything in terms of emissions reductions from them is not just unreasonable, it is also downright impossible. In China, there exists a population of 1.3 billion people, 700 million plus of which have not managed to experience the commercial benefits of modernization that has occurred over the past 30 years.

In regards to consumption, all of these individuals will be seeking devices such as cell phones, computers, and televisions in addition to more mainstream devices like hair dryers, washing machines, and refrigerators. The electricity consumption from the use of these devices is likely to be enough to outweigh any developments in green technology China may implement, and this is not even counting the emissions that will go into producing and shipping these technologies to their places of purchase.

Yet one should by no means think China is trying to give the rest of the world the short end of the stick in terms of its efforts on emission reduction; the government simply recognizes that the country will keep growing at a rate that will offset any efficiencies to the point that it will always look as though they are polluting more. China is going to be a huge polluter for the majority of the 21st century, but they are doing their absolute best now to shift their economy onto more energy efficient tracks for the future. Their investments in battery powered cars, hydroelectric power, solar power, and wind power either equal or far outweigh our own. Even though China's emissions may rise, it is very easy that they could humiliate the rest of the world (bar Germany, who rivals it on green energy efficiency) with their admirable and effective transition to green energy sources.

This just goes to show how effective a government can be when it comes to the recognition that an ecological disaster in their country could completely undermine their legitimacy. The last thing the Chinese Communist Party wants to be accused of in the case of any crisis is not having done anything to prevent it.

Read the full article here.