Ginosar on Global Warming

CONTACT: mginosar@sbcglobal.net Any material may be copied. Dr. Matania Ginosar is an Environmental Scientist and Electrical Engineer. He has been manager of R&D in Advanced Electronics, a Manager of the Solar Energy Office of the California Energy Commission and a Manager of Wind Energy for the California Energy Commission. This blog contains his thoughts on environmental issues, mostly in the area of global warming and climate change. Resume included among articles.

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China economic actions set bad example on global warming

by Ginosar

China is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and would continue to be a much larger emitter as its economy grows in its customary rapid rate of close to ten percent. India would be the second over time. China is the most dangerous country to global survival since no matter what all other developed countries TOGETHER will be adding to GHG; China's would still be larger by a considerable factor. Read: Huge India and China impacts on GHG emissions. China communist leadership decided decades ago to copy the economic model of the Western world instead of developing a unique path that could suit their own special situation better. They assumed that the "old, proven" economic growth of the West over last half a century is the way to go. But China circumstances are so different from the West, especially our open markets and freedom of financial institutions to "innovate" new methods to drain huge profits from uncontrolled financial instruments- as we saw in the last decades. These freedoms put the world at peak economic crises that are still unresolved. I expected, erroneously, that their central government, free from our type of political pressure and narrow mindlessness, would allow them to see through some of our key mistakes, but not so. They still think too much like us in many negative respects. China arrived by trial and error at a mix economic model: overall national control of the of the nation's finances, holding of huge capital reserves, and nearly complete freedom for any local business to innovate and build with minimal supervision or standards. The problem I want to focus on now is that China national control of its international currency exchange rate has distorted the basis of the key international agreement of floating exchange rates. The freedom of the markets to continuously vary the value of each national currency helps stabilize national economies and provide a more fair international trade. China helds its currency fixed at very low level for many years to allow it to export products at lower cost while making imports much more expensive, resulting in huge benefit to it at a high cost to the rest of the exporting world. The continuous attempts by the US [the biggest importer of China products] and other nations to gently prod China to allow freer and more rapid changes in its currency was rejected until recently. But China's recent response is a fake; it allows a minor fluctuation of its currency, in the order of just 2%. So, here we are with a country that is determined to rebuff legitimate international needs and pressure to fully satisfy its own desires. China maximizing its export at high costs to other nations is a dangerous sign for global warming cooperation. China leadership still does not grasp that we are all in the same sinking boat. If China will do the same regarding GHG emissions, maximize its economy and thus increase its huge GHG emissions, the global community could not curtail GW almost at all. All international efforts would be negligible compare to the huge emissions by China [and India].

But China is already doing just that, it fully refused to commit to any meaningful reduction in GHG. All its statements are essentially nonsense, [the same as the US] and any one who does not see through them is not a realist. Like the USA, the way China is going now re. GW is window dressing. We can not expect any meaningful cooperation from them. The fact that they are installing vast amount of wind energy, the fact that they are installing more than ten nuclear power plants in the next decade are of such a small scale compare to the problem that it is essentially useless. According to some estimates, may be they could reduce their vast future emissions by 10%, if we are lucky. Frankly, I was hoping that China's leadership would be able to look at the future with clearer eyes than the politically very limited US Congress and Administration. But so far I am mistaken. I still hope that they will force us to deal with GW in much more realistic terms. Anything we did up to now globally is inadequate, or more correctly, window dressing, nothing of substance. And the window of opportunity to prevent some of the more serious damages to our small globe is closing very fast.