Political Climate Articles
In Crackdown on Energy Use, China to Shut 2,000 Factories
HONG KONG - Earlier this summer, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China promised to use an "iron hand" to improve his country's energy efficiency, and a growing number of businesses are now discovering that it feels like a fist.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology quietly published a list late Sunday of 2,087 steel mills, cement works and other energy-intensive factories required to close by Sept. 30.
Energy analysts described it as a significant step toward the country's energy-efficiency goals, but not enough by itself to achieve them.
Over the years, provincial and municipal officials have sometimes tried to block Beijing's attempts to close aging factories in their jurisdictions.
These officials have particularly sought to protect older steel mills and other heavy industrial operations that frequently have thousands of employees and have sometimes provided workers with housing, athletic facilities and other benefits since the 1950s or 1960s.
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British Government Looks to Private Sector on Energy Efficiency
Having major corporations advising government isn't anything new… but in the UK they have begun a refreshing approach. Instead of having major oil companies and other big polluters working hard to water down any legislation aimed at controlling the damage caused by their operations, the UK is taking a different tack and having some of their most prominent corporations become forces for good.
David Cameron's government took the decisive step of announcing the goal of a 10% cut in carbon in its first year in power, just days after being elected. Now Cameron has taken another firm step down the road to being the "greenest government ever" and has asked for help from some major players. Tesco, Marks & Spencer, and B&Q owners Kingfisher and HSBC will all be providing advice to the government on how exactly it can achieve this 10% target.
To some, this may seem surprising. How can a supermarket chain, a department store, a home supply store chain and a financial services company be expected to give the UK sound green advice? Simple. They are far ahead of the game and have already become quite green themselves. Super energy saving heroes, if you will.
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China Prepares to Steal United States' Thunder, May Launch Cap-and-Trade within Five Years
Just when leaders in the U.S. Senate admitted to abandoning their plan of issuing a federal climate bill by the end of this year, top Chinese officials were discussing how to launch carbon trading programs under their country's next Five-Year Plan (2011-15).
Serving as China's overarching social and economic guidance, Five-Year Plans consistently lay out the most crucial development strategies for this giant emerging economy. Once included in the plan, carbon trading will be viewed as part of China's national goals and will be domestically binding. This occurred most recently with the country's 2010 energy intensity target, which called for a 20-percent reduction from 2005 levels and was disaggregated into provincial and local targets, with local officials held accountable for achieving them.
In short, China seems to be accelerating full-throttle toward a low-carbon economy.
Chinese policymakers have been eyeing a domestic emission-trading scheme for a while. Last August, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Deputy Director Xie Zhenhua announced that China would launch a pilot carbon trading program in selected regions and/or sectors-basically the same message now discussed for the Five-Year Plan. On one hand, this reiteration demonstrates that the Chinese government is seriously considering such a market-based mitigation mechanism; on the other hand, the fact that the program's status is still in discussion one year later shows that putting cap-and-trade into action might be not be so easy in China either.
Here are some of the problems: A non-voluntary emission-trading system cannot work without a mandatory cap on emissions, either for the economy as a whole or for individual sectors. However, China is currently unlikely to set an absolute emission target because this would contradict its long-standing position at international climate negotiations that industrialized countries have a historic responsibility to take the lead in this area. Most Chinese climate officials and experts agree that China could probably peak its emissions between 2030 and 2035, but huge uncertainties remain.
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Smoggy Senators Protest EPA Plan To Save Thousands Of Children's Lives
In a startling act of fealty to polluter interests, several senators are fighting scientifically guided smog limits that would save thousands of lives a year. Under the guidance of administrator Lisa Jackson, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working to clean up one of George W. Bush's most blatant acts of ignoring science and disregarding the law, when he personally overruled the unanimous recommendations of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee for an ozone limit no higher than 70 ppb, setting instead an arbitrary and capricious standard of 75 ppb. Jackson intends to instead follow the law by setting a 60-70 ppb standard. However, a group of Democratic and Republican senators led by retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) are trying to preserve Bush's toxic legacy on behalf of the coal and oil industries in their states, complaining to Jackson that her plan "will have a significant negative impact on our states' workers and families":
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Federal Nuclear Waste Panel Overlooks Public Mistrust, Experts Say
ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2010) - According to 16 social science researchers from across the country, a renewed federal effort to fix the nation's stalled nuclear waste program is focusing so much on technological issues that it fails to address the public mistrust hampering storage and disposal efforts.
Writing in the latest issue of the journal Science, experts including Sharon M. Friedman of Lehigh University say that President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future is not focusing enough on the social and political acceptability of possible solutions. "While scientific and technical analyses are essential, they will not and arguably should not carry the day unless they address, substantively and procedurally, the issues that concern the public," the experts write.
Composed of science and technology experts and several former politicians, the presidential commission "appears to be overlooking what social scientists have learned over 20 years about public perception of, and response to, the risks of nuclear wastes," according to Friedman, professor of journalism and communication and director of the Science and Environmental Writing Program at Lehigh.
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