Australia seems set to push ahead with a controversial emissions trading scheme aimed at reducing greenhouse gases which, if not actually effectual, will at least signal to the world the way it might be going to avert catastrophic anthropomorphic climate change. With DownUnder producing just 1.3 per cent of the globe's greenhouse gases, though, and the proposed ETS aimed at halving this but over many, many years, it is no great surprise to find even ETS architect Ross Garnaut arguing the need for China to curb its emissions. Big time.
AUSTRALIA seems set to push ahead with a controversial emissions trading scheme aimed at reducing greenhouse gases which, if not actually effectual, will at least signal to the world the way it might be going to avert catastrophic anthropomorphic climate change. With DownUnder producing just 1.3 per cent of the globe's greenhouse gases, though, and the proposed ETS aimed at halving this but over many, many years, it is no great surprise to find even ETS architect Ross Garnaut arguing the need for China to curb its emissions. Big time.
So what are the chances of China knuckling down to the gargantuan task of curbing its emissions to a degree that might curb a greenhouse crisis? Emissions that are the by-product of a rapidly-developing country anxious to stamp its economic imprimatur on the world. A country only new to the idea of free-market economics and one that's still grappling with the idea of international human rights.
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Not good. That's the general consensus you'll find on the street. There's no great faith in China's interest, or ability, to cut its appalling emissions output. It's an attitude fully imbued with a sense of futility for those Australians concerned about what an ETS might do to the domestic economy without effecting any material climate change. Think one million direct manufacturing sector jobs, and another one million indirect jobs _ or so people such as Keith Orchison, chief of the Electricity Supply Association for 12 years and a member of the Howard government critical infrastructure advisory council from 2003 to 2007, warns.
But others argue China can dramatically change its emissions output and should actually be expected to do so without coercion from any dogmatic Western nations ostensibly trying to cut its rocketting economic fortunes. Two such parties are Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, authors of the newly-released book Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (Penguin). Carson is industry editor of the Economist who's also worked as a reporter and anchor for BBC Television and Channel Four. Vaitheeswaran is an MIT-trained engineer who spent 10 years covering global environment and energy issues for the Economist and author of Power to the Peopl .
The arguments are intriguing, to say the least. In a nutshell, they argue China is reluctant to be held hostage to a Western-driven oil energy regime. Especially when China's demands are so large, and to become only exponentially greater. China's motoring infrastructure is only embryonic compared to what the country's growth suggests is yet to come _ and to leave itself beholden to oil would be foolhardy in the extreme. China's successful future will not lie with the dirty energies it is presently utilising and making such an emissions mess with, they say.
``The good news the eco-pessimists will never tell you is that there is, in fact, hope on that front,'' Zoom tells us. ``The risks are real, to be sure, but so too are the opportunities for as clean-energy revolution led by Asia's giants. China's economy is on a steep curve but so too is its determination and ability to do something about air pollution and greenhouse gases by leapfrogging dirty processes and going straight to clean technology in transportation and other areas.
``Will such a leap really happen? At first blush, it appears that China is merely following America's lead in embracing the motor car. Look harder, though, and even in the midst of China's petroleum-fueled prosperity, you can already see the beginnings of a greener, cleaner energy economy. And even eco-skeptics will appreciate the most powerful force behind the Chinese push, a force more politically resonant than distant fears about climate change: energy security.
``The hard men of the national-security apparatus in China, as in America, are growing increasingly nervous about their country's dependence on oil imports. For its entire history until about a decade ago, china was energy independent, even exporting; but its economic surge of the 1990s turned it rapidly into the world's second-biggest petroleum user, after America. China's military planners know that their country will grow only ever more dependent on barrels from the Persian Gulf, home to most of the world's remaining oil _ and that they do not have a ``blue water'' navy that can prevent the US navy from cutting off that vital lifeline in case of a conflict (say, over Taiwan). That security imperative as much as green concerns explains why the Chinese leadership is acting on energy efficiency and alternatives to oil.''
Carson and Vaitheeswaran see China's car future in hydrogen, in fuel cells, in alternative fuels, in hybrids, in electrics. The petroleum orthodoxy is going the way of the dodo and the consumer demands for cheap fuel, as much as the ever-tightening availability of petroleum fuels, means China will clean up its greenhouse act of its own volition. It has no choice. If correct, the question Australian might ask is what damage it will do to itself while this inevitable scenario unfolds?
