A common conservative reaction to climate change issues has been "Oh, yeah, well what about China!", and sometimes you even see pundits hinting that us enlightened Westerners need to put some pressure on China to get them to clean up their act, but that strikes me as ridiculous: they know they've got an environmental problem and they're certainly intelligent and capable enough to solve it. (And have you looked at us enlightened Westerners recently?).
It seems to me like the near future can be taken as a cognitive competition, a test between governing systems: Which of us will respond first to the threat posed by global warming?
In the cartoon version of the US vs. China, it's the rough-and-tumble of democracy vs the steady-hand of a top-down oligarchy, though actually the distinctions are murkier than that: China's phenomenal economic success in recent decades has been produced with a form of capitalism with more local control than existed in the old days under Mao. And that may be part of the trouble, according to Beina Xu, writing for the Council on Foreign Relations (China's Environmental Crisis):
The legacy of decentralization characterized by Deng's reforms remains at the heart of China's environmental struggles today. The reforms diffused authority to the provinces, creating a proliferation of township and village enterprises (TVEs) to encourage development in rural industries. In 1997, TVEs generated almost a third of the national GDP. But local governments were difficult to monitor and therefore seldom upheld environmental standards. Today, environmental policies remain difficult to enforce at a local level, where officials often retain economic incentives to ignore them. (April 25, 2014)
There are some areas where China is arguably ahead of us, as Jeff Goodell comments in a recent Rolling Stone article China, the Climate and the Fate of the Planet:
Policywise, Chinese leaders have also been innovative. In the U.S., neither a carbon tax nor a cap-and-trade system to put a price on carbon pollution is under serious consideration; in contrast, China's carbon-trading program, which includes more than 2,000 pollution sources, is the second-largest trading system in the world (after the EU's). "If China is successful in using market forces to cap carbon and transform its economy, that may be the best shot we have to limit climate change," says Dan Dudek, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund. (September 15, 2014)
Goodell also discusses another difference between the US and China: the US has a somewhat higher tolerance for social activism- and historically, that was tremendously important in the creation of the EPA. In China environmental protests are not unheard of, but the boundary between what's allowed and what isn't isn't easy to define (roughly, challenging local policies seems okay, but don't get anywhere near attacking the central rule of the party).
I gather China worries about "foreign" NGOs like Greenpeace, but they do have some NGOs of their own (including some GONGOs, which are "Governmentally Organized Non-Governmental Organizations", a concept which I'm sure would make perfect sense to me if I were Chinese).
Beina Xu talks about some recent actions China has been taking:
Since January 2014, the central government has required 15,000 factories, including large state-owned enterprises, to publicly report real-time figures on their air emissions and water discharges. And the government has pledged to spend $275 billion over the next five years to clean up the air. More recently, China's legislature amended the country's environmental protection law to allow for stricter punishments against companies or individuals caught polluting the environment.
China is also one of the biggest investors in renewables; its spending could total 1.8 trillion RMB ($300 billion) in the five years through 2015 as part of its pledge to cut its carbon intensity. According to its National Energy Administration, renewable energy sources comprised 57 percent of newly installed electricity-generating capacity in the first ten months of 2013. (April 25, 2014)
It makes sense that China would be at the forefront of solar power installations (cheaply manufactured photovaltics from China are one of the central reasons solar power fans have seemed so happy of late). Interestingly, China is also at the forefront of nuclear power development, including research. Ken Silverstein, at the Christian Science Monitor reports (Thorium: a safer nuclear power):
In the same month as the Three Mile Island and Fukushima nuclear disasters, China announces it is speeding up its research into so-called molten salt reactors that can run on thorium. If it succeeds, it would create a cheaper, more efficient, and safer form of nuclear power that produces less nuclear waste than today's uranium-based technology. (March 28, 2014)
According to a recent report in Science China's R&D budget is now the third largest in the world, behind the US and Europe, and ahead of Japan.
China now has 28 reactors under construction, making them the leader in new nuclear power plants. James Hansen talks about this in The Energy to Fight Injustice:
... removing carbon from our energy supplies- particularly for developing countries such as China and India- requires a suite of carbon-free technologies: hydro, solar, wind and nuclear power.
This last is a key part of the solution, and one we unfortunately abandoned. Years ago, the US, as the leader in nuclear R&D, had an opportunity to help find a carbon-free path for the world. In 1976, nuclear scientists were ready to build a demonstration 'fast' nuclear power plant. Today's 'slow' reactors use less than 1% of the nuclear fuel. A 'fast' reactor can utilise more than 99% of the nuclear fuel and can 'burn' nuclear waste, which will be needed in the future as easily available uranium is used up.
However, anti-nuclear forces in politics and 'green' organisations eliminated this opportunity- the project was stopped by President Jimmy Carter. Research continued at a low level until 1993 when President Bill Clinton delivered the coup de grace ...
The enormity of these anti-nuclear policy decisions is difficult to exaggerate. Energy consumption is an inescapable requirement of development, and renewable energy sources alone cannot satisfy the energy demands of China and other developing nations. ...
China is already doing more to safeguard the environment than we are in the West. For example, where possible, new buildings in China use geothermal heat and other renewables, and efficiency standards are ratcheted up when improved technologies appear.
But we should not expect China to use renewable energy for base-load electricity.
As an example, the new US solar power plant, Ivanpah, near the Nevada-California border, which cost $2.2 billion ... and covers 13km2, will generate 0.82TWh of electricity per year. In contrast, Westinghouse is nearing completion of two AP-1000 nuclear plants in China. These nuclear facilities each require about 1.3km2 and cost China about $3.5 billion. Each plant will produce 8.8TWh per year. It would take more than 10 Ivanpahs to yield as much electricity and an area of more than 128km2 [nearly 50 square miles].
The AP-1000 is a fine nuclear power plant, incorporating several important safety improvements. However, further advances in nuclear plants beyond AP-1000 are possible. The US must cooperate with China and assist in its nuclear development.(July 23, 2014)
Notes on some sources:
The Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone article was found via a link by John Harz at http://www.skepticalscience.com/
The James Hansen article at CSAS was found via a link by a Richard Reiss, commenting on the Rolling Stone article.