Coals to China

Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China’s coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.
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I was reading an irritating little screed in one of Victoria’s soft-letie free mags which suggests that the haprer government’s gutting of the feds Kyoto compliance programs was oh so very wrong. After all, every country in the world - except for the bad old US (and Australia and India….) had signed on and that was such a good thing in itself.

Of course the reality is and remains that the miniscule gains which may have come about as a result of Kyoto (though more likely the rising price of oil) have been entirely wiped out by China’s rush to industrialize. (And that is to ignore entirely India’s similar rush which is eaqually “dirty”.)

If we grant the piety that global warming a) does exists, b) is to some degree a product of human action rather than increased solar output or the effect of a long cycle we have no clue about) Kyoto is precisely the wrong way to deal with it.

Kyoto famously excluded China and India from the first round. It is being ignored by dozens of nations who have discovered the cost of complaince is staggering. And it is rendered superfulous by a set of economic and scientific trends.

Ultimately, the solution to whatever the human component of global warming is will rest on the rise in the price of energy as energy sources become scarcer. You don’t have to believe in “peak oil” to realize that the price of oil will continue to rise as primarily Asian demand increases. This will be true for coal as well.

As that price goes up the attractions of the alternatives to fosil fuels and the efficiency gains in the use of those fuels will tend to dampen the amount of alledgedly greenhouse gases which are emitted.

Which bothers the soft left because it is a market/technical/scientific solution to a problem rather than a statist, interventionalist, jobs for the boys fix. However, $3.00 a litre gas will do more than all the government programs in the world to promote alternatives to fossil fuel use.

Of course you can’t hit Harper over the head with a market driven solution so where’s the fun in that.

Written by jay on June 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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