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<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2017/06/15/maybe-china-isnt-an-environmental-vanguard/" target="_blank">Maybe China isn’t an environmental vanguard</a></h3>
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<p>Source: Sup China (6/14/17)<br />
<a href="http://supchina.com/2017/06/14/maybe-china-isnt-environmental-vanguard-chinas-latest-political-current-affairs-news/">Maybe China isn’t an environmental vanguard</a></p>
<p>Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a leading scholar in the study of Chinese environmental politics, <a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=fa246751d4&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">took a pessimistic view</a> on China’s role as a leader in the fight against climate change in a <em>Politico </em>op-ed this week. She points out the contrasting trends in China’s environmental influence —<strong> the good, the bad, and the ugly</strong> — and concludes that China is not yet ready to “fill the void that Washington is leaving” on climate change.</p>
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<li>The good includes a forecast that China will meet its Paris commitment to have emissions peak by 2030, an increasing number of canceled new coal-fired power plants, and a whopping <strong>$78.3 billion that the country invested in renewable energy</strong> in 2016 — far more than either Europe ($59.8 billion) or the U.S. ($46.4 billion).</li>
<li>The bad includes the reality that China is now responsible for <strong>nearly a third — 29 percent — of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions</strong>, a resurgence of coal-to-chemical plants as the country shifts away from traditional coal plants, and a continued resistance to international monitoring and verification of the country’s emissions.</li>
<li>The ugly, as Economy puts it, is that “whatever positive steps China is taking at home are not being replicated in its behavior abroad.” <strong>China’s position as the “world’s largest exporter of coal-fired power plant finance and technology” </strong>directly contradicts the spirit of the Paris Agreement, she says. The construction of over 100 coal-fired power plants is being sponsored by China in just the “<a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=397d05e5ab&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Belt and Road</a>” countries alone.</li>
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<p>The contradiction between China’s roles in both clean energy advancement and the export of environmentally harmful technologies is neatly encapsulated in two stories from<em>Bloomberg </em>and <em>Reuters</em>. On the one hand, <em>Bloomberg </em><a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=cc5594054e&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reports</a> that “coal is no longer king as China spurs world shift to cleaner energy,” while on the other hand, <em>Reuters </em><a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=129d9b7e6b&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">notes</a> that a mega dam is scheduled to be built by China in Pakistan in 2018, a project that has attracted criticism from India not just for running through parts of disputed Kashmir, but also for <a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=10404c3c68&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ecological and water security concerns</a>.</p>
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by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on June 15, 2017 </div>
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