Two new power plants are expected to be a major step in meeting Pakistan’s growing energy crisis. Link: Pakistan Breaks Ground on Nuclear Power Plant Project With China ; ;Related ArticlesRetro Report: Love Canal and Its Mixed LegacyDot Earth Blog: Revisiting Love Canal4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For ;
Read article here:
Pakistan Breaks Ground on Nuclear Power Plant Project With China
China is undergoing a surprising reverse migration: As millions leave to find work in the cities, some well-educated urban dwellers are relocating to small towns. View the original here: Urbanites Flee China’s Smog for Blue Skies ; ;Related ArticlesIran Would Eliminate Stock of Some of Its Enriched Uranium Under DealExperts Say Poaching Could Soon Lead to a Decline in the Rhino PopulationBloomberg Wants Restaurants to Compost ;
Link –
A top climate strategist for the Chinese government explains the country’s stance on global warming. See the article here: A Closer Look at China’s ‘You First’ Stance in Climate Treaty Talks ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at China’s ‘You First’ Stance in Climate Treaty TalksDid 90 Companies ‘Cause the Climate Crisis of the 21st Century’?These Members of Congress Are Bankrolled by the Fracking Industry ;
Continue reading:
A Closer Look at China’s ‘You First’ Stance in Climate Treaty Talks
A top climate strategist for the Chinese government explains the country’s stance on global warming. Read More: Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at China’s ‘You First’ Stance in Climate Treaty Talks ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: Did 90 Companies ‘Cause the Climate Crisis of the 21st Century’?U.S. and China Find Convergence on Climate IssueA Closer Look at China’s ‘You First’ Stance in Climate Treaty Talks ;
Source article:
Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at China’s ‘You First’ Stance in Climate Treaty Talks
Who’s most accountable for the vast emissions of greenhouse gases so far — the companies that extracted the fuels or the citizens using them? See original article: Dot Earth Blog: Did 90 Companies ‘Cause the Climate Crisis of the 21st Century’? ; ;Related ArticlesDid 90 Companies ‘Cause the Climate Crisis of the 21st Century’?U.S. and China Find Convergence on Climate IssueDeveloping Nations Stage Protest at Climate Talks ;
Read this article –
Dot Earth Blog: Did 90 Companies ‘Cause the Climate Crisis of the 21st Century’?
How did China grow its GPD by 10 percent every year for more than three decades, from a virtual standing start, rising to become the world’s second-largest economy?
Through a simple, horrendous policy: growth at all costs.
In other words, forget about public health, screw happiness, trample justice, and fuck the environment. Just go out there and make as much damned money as you can.
But as the country begins grasping the environmental and social carnage that unchecked growth has inflicted, its leaders are realizing that “growth at all costs” is no way to live.
“A subtle shift in China is under way,” Scotiabank commodity market analyst Patricia Mohr said during a recent mining conference. “They are no longer determined to have economic growth at any cost; they want economic growth which meets their objectives.”
China’s development strategy for 2011 to 2015 notes goals in such non-economic realms as the environment, energy efficiency, and education. And the strategy, technically called the country’s 12th five-year plan, lowers economic growth aspirations to 7 percent per year. “China’s leaders are now prioritising strategies and measures to ensure long-term prosperity for the entire nation,” noted KPMG [PDF] in its analysis of the plan after it was published in 2010.
And now that subtle shift in strategy has led to a new formal policy — one that abandons the notion of growth at all costs.
Details of the policy change were outlined in economic and social reforms published last week by the ruling Communist Party. (The same document also announced an easing of the country’s one-child policy — and further reforms might be on their way, potentially allowing all families to have two children.) From Reuters:
[T]he ruling Communist Party said it would put more emphasis on environmental protection when assessing officials, and would also hold local authorities directly responsible for pollution. …
With public anger mounting over a series of scandals involving hazardous smog, contaminated soil and toxic water supplies, China has identified the environment as one of the biggest potential sources of instability. …
The new policy document said China would “correct the bias towards assessing (officials) on the speed of economic growth and increase the weight placed on other indicators such as resource use, environmental damage, ecological benefits, industrial overcapacity, scientific innovation, work safety and newly-added debt.”
China already assesses local officials on the way they handle the environment, but with the economy still considered the priority, local authorities stress their green credentials by building ostentatious national parks, wetlands or reforestation projects rather than address the cause of pollution and risk revenues and jobs.
The dumping of “growth at all costs” is a positive development for people living in China, where brown skies and swine-laden rivers are testament to environmental quality in free fall. It’s also a positive development for the rest of us, because China’s greenhouse gas emissions have been rising along with its economic output, spiking at a time when American and European emissions are in slight decline.
Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency / European Commission’s Joint Research CentreClick to embiggen.
Zhou Lei of Nanjing University, who studies the impact of business on the environment, argues that the reforms don’t go far enough and appear to be “typical Chinese lip service.” Here’s hoping he’s wrong.
Source
To tackle pollution, China to drop pursuit of growth at all costs, Reuters
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology
,
Link:
China officially abandons its pursuit of “growth at all costs”
Photo: Lu Feng
A Chinese physician is raising concerns about the poor quality of men’s sperm, which he attributes to decades of exposure to pollution in the country. According to the Telegraph, the doctor, Li Zheng, told local newspapers that he was “very worried” about the falling quality of sperm, and that two-thirds sperm at Shanghai’s main bank did not meet standards set by the World Health Organization.
A 2012 study, coordinated by Dr Li, concluded that over the last 10 years worsening environmental conditions had closely mirrored the falling quality of sperm. Low sperm counts and aspermia, a condition that causes a man to produce no semen at all, were among the problems.
Oftentimes, it’s women’s rather than men’s reproductive problems that are at the center of reproductive health discussions. For example, the Wall Street Journal called a hospital in Beijing to inquire about their take on pollution and reproductive health, but the hospital spokesperson told them, “Our (obstetrician and gynecologist) chief refused the interview, because there is no data or document to explain the pollution’s impact to pregnant women.”
Still, there is evidence that environmental pollution is a double-edged sword impacting both men and women. As the Journal writes: “Previous studies have shown exposure to high levels of pollution can reduce the success rate of in vitro fertilization and drawn a link between toxic air and reduced fertility in men.”
The problem likely reaches beyond China, too. Some researchers have reported a worldwide decline in average sperm counts. Others, however, point out that the issue is far from settled and may be a case of not enough data. As researchers pursue more studies to unravel this tangled subject, however, couples in China, at least, are experiencing the very real impacts of falling sperm quality and availability. As Quartz reports, sperm goes for around $4,900 on the Chinese black market these days.
More from Smithsonian.com:
Female Squid Uses Sperm for Both Reproducing and Snacking
American May Be the World’s Top Exporter of Sperm
See the article here:
Researchers say the oldest fossil of two insects copulating — in this case, froghoppers killed in a volcanic eruption 165 million years ago — was identified in what is now Northeastern China. View original article – Case of Insect Interruptus Yields a Rare Fossil Find ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: Helen Caldicott, Chernobyl and the New York Academy of SciencesNational Briefing | South: Arkansas: ExxonMobil Fines Proposed After Oil SpillDot Earth Blog: Wide Rejection of Labels for Genetically Engineered Food in Washington State ;
View original:
The world keeps making climate change worse, pumping out more greenhouse gases every year than the year before. But in an encouraging sign, the rate at which emissions are growing appears to be slowing down.
Global emissions hit 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year — up 1.1 percent from 2011. That’s bleak, but the glimmer of hope here is that emissions increased during the last decade by much more than that — by an average of 2.9 percent every year.
The slowdown is attributed to the worldwide growth of the renewables sector; to America’s fracking boom (which produces cheap natural gas that’s reducing coal use but also hobbling the growth of renewables); to new hydropower projects that are offsetting the use of coal in China; and to falling energy consumption and transportation in Europe triggered in part by a bad economy.
The latest annual estimate by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre says this “may be the first sign of a more permanent slowdown in the increase in global CO2 emissions, and ultimately of declining global emissions.”
That “may be” is a big caveat. It depends largely on continued improvements by the world’s three biggest greenhouse gas polluters — China, the U.S., and the European Union, which together accounted for 55 percent of global emissions last year.
Of course, positive though this development might be, nobody is suggesting that these improvements alone will be enough to curb the climate disaster engulfing the globe.
“It is good news but nowhere near good enough,” Grist board member Bill McKibben told BBC News. “The solution we need here is dictated by physics, and at the moment the physics is busy melting the Arctic and acidifying the ocean. We can’t just plateau or go up less, we have to very quickly try and get the planet off fossil fuels.”
Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research CentreClick to embiggen.
Source
Report suggests slowdown in CO2 emissions rise, BBC
Trends in global CO2 emissions: 2013 report, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission Joint Research Centre
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy
Originally posted here:
Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?
How a conservation group worked with a basketball star to inspire a businessman to press politicians to cut China’s appetite for shark-fin soup. See more here: Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at Factors Curbing China’s Appetite for Shark Fins ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: TV Stars Lead Online Push to Curb China’s Shark Fin AppetiteA Closer Look at Factors Curbing China’s Appetite for Shark FinsHit by Low Prices, Lobstermen Are at Odds in Maine and Canada ;
Source article –
Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at Factors Curbing China’s Appetite for Shark Fins
Libros
