It’s hard for me to get excited about a carbon emissions agreement in which China doesn’t need to do anything until 2030, that the Senate won’t ratify (if it even gets brought to the floor), that is unverifiable, and that won’t achieve any objective other than to have an agreement. I can’t help but wonder if that is the objective of the agreement: to have an agreement. If that’s the case, it’s already a rousing success.
As far as I can tell it won’t make the people who think that the entire idea of global warming is an anti-U. S. hoax happy and it won’t make the people who think that global warming threatens the very existence of life on earth happy, either.
You want an agreement? I’ll give you an agreement. The Chinese declare an immediate moratorium on building new coal-fired power plants and so do we. We can even throw in a 10% reduction in emissions from the aggregate U. S. vehicle fleet over 10 years on top of that. We’re already on a glide path toward that.
Considering that China builds a new coal plant every week, and is considered the largest coal consumer in the world, there is no chance of them scaling coal back in the near future. This agreement, like so many others, is of little value except in pushing the U.S. towards even more stringent carbon emission standards here in this country, straining our economy and raising the price of energy for those who can least afford it.
The Chinese have agreed that 2030 will be peak carbon for them. Pretty signifcant fo rthem if they do it. Looking at the pictures of Beijing, I suspect that they know they need to do something.
Steve
“I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
steve:
Think about the motivations of the Chinese authorities. China is not a democracy and the Chinese authorities have little more regard for ordinary people than they do for dogs or cattle. The level of pollution in China will continue to rise as long as the authorities believe they can stay in power. Regardless of any commitments they won’t threaten their own power. They believe that there will be civil unrest unless the growth rate stays high. From their standpoint it’s already dangerously low. They’re not going to threaten economic growth, their economic growth depends on cheap energy, and cheap energy depends on coal.
Carbon production from increased Chinese use of coal overwhelms anything we can reasonably accomplish here. This is not a first step. If it sets the standard for other countries it’s a dangerous one: developing countries (even when they’re actually developed countries) don’t do anything. Europe has reached the point where they’ve done all they can; all the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Our carbon production is already decreasing rapidly as we replace the use of coal with natural gas. China needs to move now not in 15 years.
Just had a board meeting for one of our companies. Management have agreed to quadruple growth and double profit margins, making 2030 peak profitability for them. Pretty significant for us if they do it. Looking at the current financial statements I suspect that they know they need to do something. All we had to do was agree to no audits.
It looks like the administration is squarely in “give me a legacy, any legacy” time. They seem to be good buddies with Iran, maybe they should quit fooling around with chickenshits and get it on with an Ayatollah.
How funny is it that anonymous Adminstration sources are complaining about other people being chickenshit?
Dave- That same Chinese leadership is also facing the problem that the air in their cities is becoming almost unbreathable. They are dealing with health issues because of this. They are not contemplating reducing emissions as a feel good thing or to make Obama happy. It is an actual necessity. They make think of their people as cattle, but there is more than one reason for them to stampede. If the secondary costs from cheap coal keep rising, then it is no longer cheap.
Fortunately for them, Swanson’s law seems to be mostly holding. Wind power is becoming viable in the US as we pioneer the tech. Solar thermal has promise.
Steve
All those alternatives energy sources have been in the process of “becoming viable” since I started reading Popular Mechanics almost 40 years ago. Still waiting.
And it’s not likely that if these techs become viable that the manufacturing will remain here. They’ll ship that off to the Third World just as fast as they can.
That same Chinese leadership is also facing the problem that the air in their cities is becoming almost unbreathable. They are dealing with health issues because of this.
And, you think the Chinese govt. really cares about the health of it’s people? They rule with an iron, unsympathetic governmental hand, where publicly questioning their leaders at news conferences is verberton, and deference to unhealthy public conditions is not a primary concern of their’s. Their goals are to be a super power over the U.S., and that’s what motivates their policy-making and long term goals. Cooperating with Obama’s climate change whims is a ruse.
steve:
Again, I don’t think you fully appreciate the enormous separation between the lives of the Chinese leadership and their families and ordinary Chinese people. The pollution doesn’t matter to the leadership or their families. They can live their entire lives in climate-controlled comfort.
And as far as the ordinary Chinese people are concerned the view of the leadership is what’s a couple 100,000 deaths more or less? There are plenty more where they came from.
They are not Western politicians.
I think that what is actually going on here is that the Obama Administration is rummaging around for something it can sell as an accomplishment to its Green financial supporters while the Chinese leadership wants to get the Americans off their backs about human rights issues (remember Hong Kong?) and create a bigger market for the sale of solar panels, most of which are made in China.
I don’t think chinese air pollution and carbon emissions are directly related. Cleaning up the air pollution isn’t going to automatically lead to carbon reduction.
I don’t really understand what the administration thinks it’s getting with this agreement.
The dramatic photos show particulates and, probably, the effects of ozone. So, yes, the pictures are irrelevant to the agreement.
Andy, it’s a photo-op. It’s not supposed to be an agreement with actual material benefits.