To some extent, your website has encouraged me to believe that technical fixes might already exist which, if deployed internationally and very soon, could prevent dangerous climate change. Simultaneously, however, your political posts seem depressingly partisan and counter-productive.

As I understand matters, we are facing longish-term threats from climate change and immediate threats from peak oil. The latter may be a spur to the solution of the former but only if we don’t turn to non CCS coal, tar sands etc. Simultaneously, however, we are experiencing massive population growth and, if we are to avoid a balancing massively increased death rate, we are likely, in the short term, to use any energy source we can get our hands on. Clearly, in the longer term, world population must, in any event, rapidly stabilise and then drop to a sustainable level, whether by design or by force of circumstances.

If this analysis is roughly correct and if your “wedge” approach is valid, it would be helpful if you could attempt an analysis of the national and international political measures that might be adopted to enable your recommended technical implementations. This would be more useful than “slagging off” the Republican Party and the Chinese.

It occurs to me that there has been much rhetoric on the issue which, though possibly valid, doesn’t contribute to a solution. President Bush, for example, correctly states that unilateral US action on climate change, unmatched by India and China, may hurt Americans in the short term without achieving the desired purpose of avoiding dangerous climate change. Meanwhile, the growing Asian economies are correctly claiming that the West is responsible for most of the atmospheric CO2 increase so far and so argue that they must be allowed to continue to pollute until they have caught up or overtaken us. A lot of current Asian pollution arises because the West has outsourced a lot of its manufacturing base. In so doing, however, it has exported jobs and run up huge foreign debts, rendering itself less capable of reducing its remaining emissions. However, Asians, Africans and, to a lesser extent, South Americans have contibuted most to unsustainable population growth (thanks largely to Western-developed medical advances and The Green Revolution). Ironically, the Chinese are now attempting to “shut the stable door” (and being criticised for it by American liberals). Many “greens” demand that we be put on a war footing in order to deal with Climate Change yet seem remarkably unprepared to surrender themselves to the authoritarian regime which this might require. I suspect that an authoritarian approach might be needed, given the urgent need for action and the lack of consensus among the public about this need.

Should one be more concerned about per capita CO2 emissions or emissions per land area (adjusted in some way to account for land productivity)? Should nations which absorb significant numbers of immigrants receive some compensating offsets? Equally, should nations which keep their citizens alive into an extended and unproductive old age be more heavily taxed?

It would seem that the achievement of an international (even national) agreement on climate change measures is still a long way off and, if achieved, could be too late. However, were sufficient Western and any other like-minded nations to agree to the imposition of standard carbon emission taxes and to boycott all products from non signatory nations, we might have the beginning of a workable global strategy. I’m no economist or politician and the suggestion may be totally naive and impracticable. However, I hope it might induce responses from those more informed than I.

What China has been doing on coal in recent years is indeed unconscionable. The Olympics has become a farce. There is a good article in the Washington Post today on how the Chinese people have been shielded from what the rest of the world thinks of them, see “Blinded By the Firewall: Why the Chinese Think The World Loves China.” I can’t imagine any reason for soft-pedaling the truth to China — or any country.

I expect to continue to be intensely critical of China, much as I am intensely critical of any major country, including my own, blindly set on destroying the health and well-being of their citizens and those of the rest of the world.

Sadly, we have run out of time to wait on “long-term solutions.” If U.S. and Chinese leaders don’t reverse course sharply in the next decade, it doesn’t much matter what happens after that.

I appreciate that the Chinese government does not allow people operating in China to speak truth to power. I will try not to be critical of those trying their best to work within a flawed and corrupt system. But in turn, I cannot accept your criticism.

I probably post 10 times as much on the horror of the Bush administration than I do on the horror of the Chinese administration. But China has sought the attention of the world by pursuing these Olympics while creating the misimpression they would clean up their act — from either an environmental or human rights perspective.

If China can’t handle a few strong adjectives and verbs, then I guess it isn’t ready to take a leadership role in the world after all. It may be a cliché, but with great power comes great responsibility. The reverse is true. If you don’t exert great responsibility, then you are not a great power.

This isn’t the first time you’ve been intensely critical of China, nor the first time that I’ve taken issue with your tone. (See this post: http://climateprogress.org/ 2008/ 02/ 21/ china-sells-its-soul-for-liquid-coal/ )

While I appreciate your conviction, I want to remind you that using such harsh words (”unconscionable,” “shame on everyone involved in this charade”) only broadens an existing communication gap between China and the rest of the world by perpetuating Chinese stereotypes that foreigners are elitist and Western stereotypes that China is evil or hopeless.

In some ways, I suppose it comes down to what your ultimate goal is. The intensely pessimistic tone of foreign discussion of China’s environment is often founded on some sort of journalistic ideal that “the truth must be told, regardless of the consequences.” But for those of us working constructively with China on long-term solutions (which, as I’m sure you know, our world desperately needs), this incessant drum beat from abroad that China is bad bad bad is frustrating and counterproductive.

I hope this is somewhat clear and helpful. Please look me up if you ever come to Beijing so I can give you some cultural pointers.

Vance

The IOC has sold out, It is silly to expect world class efforts in Near sea level Smog. Why did they, IOC let a the black hole of Beijing to be an Olympic city?

Hopefully some fellow travelers and socialists will see the true effects of communism on China, Tibet, and Taiwan.

I was in Bejing at that time last year, and the skies really were plenty blue, and the temperature was quite comfortable. That mid-fall time of year generally has much nicer weather; I guess that also means there’s enough wind to blow away the haze for a time.

Though I could still see the effects of the pollution. Specifically, in the Forbidden City, there are a lot of ancient marble carvings that form railings, and other exposed artwork. They all showed signs of a tremendous amount of erosion, probably due to acid rain, to the point where often you couldn’t really tell what had originally been carved. You could only see blobby shapes. Veins of harder material within the marble jutted out, almost grotesquely.

Hopefully this aspect of the Olympics, while being terrible for the athletes, will raise enough awareness, both within China and in the rest of the world, that more will be done. All we’ll need to do is reference just how far below average all the gold-medal winners’ performance numbers were in ‘08.

http://img164.imageshack.us/ my.php?image=beijingsky400pm6augustxo9.jpg

Beijing 4.00 pm 6th August

But the point of the Olympics is to see the best athletes perform under somewhat close to normal if not ideal conditions. These athletes train their entire lives to win a gold medal, to set a world record. It is impossible to train under comparable conditions to Beijing, because the pollution is too dangerous.

So these athletes have been robbed of the chance to perform their best. The only thing you can say about the games is that everyone will be performing under equal conditions — although even that isn’t true, since rich countries like ours can fly their athletes in and out several times, so they don’t have to keep breathing the dirty air.

How much is each athlete worth in terms of Beijing residents ?