Our fascination with China around these parts is well-known. However, we're not so fascinated that we want to read long, number-filled reports about it. I mean, it's Friday fer chrissake.
So, we let Joel Makower do that work for us. He waded through WorldWatch's just-released "Vital Signs 2," a compendium of info on worldwide environmental trends, and found lots of tasty (and, okay, some terrifying) tidbits on the world's fastest growing big economy. Read his summary and be enlightened.
Here's a taste, from WW:
- China is rapidly increasing its dependency on automobiles, with sales of cars and light commercial vehicles expected to reach 5 million units in 2005 and 7.3 million by 2007. (p. 56)
- China's fleet of airplanes is due to skyrocket from 777 planes in 2003 to over 2,800 planes in 2023. (p. 60)
- China now ranks second (after the U.S.) in global carbon emissions, with a 14-percent share. Emissions in China are up more than 47 percent since 1990, and it accounted for half the global increase in 2003. (p. 40)
- Between 2001 and 2020, some 590 thousand people a year in China are projected to suffer premature deaths due to urban air pollution -- nearly one third of the projected world total. (p. 95)
China's on everybody's mind lately. Newsweek put it on the cover recently (a nice break from smiling white families), featuring a great story by Fareed Zakaria. I wish Zakaria had focused more on the environment and resources and less on potential military conflict ... but compared to Robert D. Kaplan's cover story in the Atlantic Monthly, Zakaria's practically a hippie.
Kaplan's a bit of a loon, in my humble opinion, and this story is a great illustration: Everything is a zero sum game, and if China gains power and influence, we lose it. Conflict is inevitable! The whole notion that we might work together with China for mutual benefit is ruled out at the outset. I found Benjamin Schwarz's piece in the same issue much more sensible, though he too focuses overmuch on sheer geopolitical power politics and too little on the issue that is really driving both China's expansion and whatever future threat it may pose: energy.
But, I'm rambling now. In summary: China, China, China, China.
Four stories that should have changed the media narrative ... but didn’t
Where things stand on the Copenhagen Accord and international climate politics
Comments
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amazingdrx Posted 1:04 am
16 May 2005
No way to prove that, but that is my feeling. I believe that renewables not only have the clear enviromental advantage over fossil and nukes, but also the clear advantage economically.
With wind power on a 1000 foot scale, the limit of tower height due to aviation, the cost could be half that of nuclear for installation and total cost per kwh will dip below 3.5 cents towards 2 cents.
This is due to economies of scale, mass production and installation, and the higher average wind speeds at the higher altitude above ground level. Also the average wind speed is up to double that in your backyard, in the high wind speed areas of the northern great plains and other favorable regions for wind.
The amount of power available from the wind rises with the cube of the wind speed. And the largest wind machines now are the 300+ foot diameter GE 3.6 megawatt machines. 3 times that size yeilds 9 times the power.
1.5 times the windspeed, a conservative estimate for these taller machines, yeilds 3 times the power.
So it is actually a fairly conservative estimate to put the output of these larger machines at 14 times the 1.4 megawatt equivalent continuous generating capacity of the of the 3.6 megawatt GE machines (40% of continuous generation due to wind variability).
This rates the 1000 foot scale machines at a conservative 20 megawatt equivalent continuous generating capacity without even factoring in the higher wind speeds on the northern great plains.
Will engineers in China and India notice these factors that US politicians ignore? I suspect they already have.
Now to enlighten the people and the clumsy apparatus that controls capital investment in the US and the rest of the world.
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premiumshlock Posted 8:30 am
16 May 2005
Stuff like that is starting to happen in this part of the world, too, though; I mean, Canada got the auto industry to comply with their standards, and in addition to California, Washington has adopted stricter emissions standards as well. And 132 mayors have pledged to get their cities' emissions down in a few years. There is hope.
As for wind, I wish wind-power companies were getting subsidies / tax-breaks; some kind of incentive. Wasn't the guy in charge of Green Mountain a Bush supporter? Well, where are the spoils?
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amazingdrx Posted 1:50 am
17 May 2005
I expect it works the same in the corporate kleptocracy of china as it does under bushco inc. theocratic kleptocracy here in the USA.
Engineers know a lot of things that they better not bring up at work, if they don't want their jobs "outsourced", hehey.
I am researching costs on the 1000 foot scale wind machines right now.
I expect the 20 megawatt machines will come in well under the $10 million dollar per unit cost, making them half the cost per watt of generating capacity of nukes?
And given mass production and installation of 10s of thousands of these larger scale wind machines?
Where will the cost finally land? It's exciting!!
At a stable price of 2 cents per kwh with no pollution, soaring imported furel costs, or astronomical nuclear waste storage costs... will the manufacturing industries in the USA put out of business by high energy costs be revived? could be.
A real boom might be right behind this new national energy policy!
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