2Sustain

First off, here is a good blog entry on the “Bush 2025” goals announcement from my friends over at Environmental Leader — the headline is so outlandish that it almost seems like it is from The Onion.

In my opinion, the elephant in the room in the global climate change debate is China. While both China and the United States each produces more than one-fifth of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, China’s emissions are soaring: China’s annual increase in emissions is greater than Germany’s total annual emissions.

Have a look at this post from, also from Environmental Leader.

The key is this: “A report to be published next month in the Journal of Environment Economics and Management by researchers from the University of California, suggests China’s greenhouse gas emissions have been underestimated, and probably passed those of the U.S. in 2006-2007, the BBC reports. The new report warns that if China doesn’t change its energy policies, its increases in greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Then have a look at this article by three very well known, highly respected climate scientists from the last issue of Nature Magazine.

This concluding paragraph is concerning at best, alarming at worst:

“Because of these dramatic changes in the global economy it is likely that we have only just begun to experience the surge in global energy use associated with ongoing rapid development. Such trends are in stark contrast to the optimism of the near-future IPCC projections and seem unlikely to alter course soon. The world is on a development and energy path that will bring with it a surge in carbon-dioxide emissions — a surge that can only end with a transformation of global energy systems. We believe such technological transformation will take many decades to complete, even if we start taking far more aggressive action on energy technology innovation today. Enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations at acceptable levels.”

To translate: China (and to a lesser degree India) will more than undo all of the well-laid plans and good intentions we in the industrialized “Rich Nations” (Kyoto’s language) devise to address climate change.

A great example from Nicholas Kristof’s NYT piece last Sunday of why this matters: “Imagine that we instituted a brutally high gas tax that reduced emissions from American vehicles by 25 percent. That would be a stunning achievement — and in just nine months, China’s increased emissions would have more than made up the difference.”

So what does all this mean? It means we need leadership that recognizes the fact that we are not trying to avoid a crisis, we are already in one. When the polar ice caps start melting and China is building coal-fired power plants at a rate of one per day we are in crisis mode already. Bush has failed us on the leadership front by ignoring the China problem and focusing our limited financial and diplomatic resources in places like Iraq these past eight years. We should have a diplomatic “surge” taking place with China and India to help those countries via technology sharing and economic partnership development. Only through such “shared-value” approaches will we ever make real progress.

The conclusion? We should all very seriously consider the next President’s stance on these issues as we enter the voting booth come November. If we get our response to this one wrong all the others will not matter.