Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

The Wall Street Journal’s environmental capital blog (June 3 2009) asked the question- Will the US go it alone on climate change? The issue rises as a result of a difference of opinion by two key officials in the Obama Administration.

Steven Chu, the1997 Nobel Physics Prize winner, who is Energy Secretary said in London last week, “that even if China and other developing countries are reluctant to make commitments at December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, ‘President Obama has made it clear that the US should act first.’”

Mr Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants to the US said, “Using China as a reason not to act is no longer an option…..China’s leadership knows well what the consequences of climate change will be for their country.” (Financial Times May 27 2009)

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reporter Catherine Dodge (June 3 2009) reported that US climate envoy Todd Stern said in Washington that the US must meet China halfway and develop a “genuine, collaborative partnership. If the two goliaths on the world stage can join hands on a climate and energy partnership, it will truly change the world.”

The US and China, now the world’s biggest producer of heat-trapping gases, together are responsible for more than 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. US officials are scheduled to be in China June 6 to work toward a partnership, with the trip designed to lay the foundation for future pacts, said Todd Stern.

The climate envoy said, “No deal will be possible if we don’t find a way forward with China.”

The way diplomacy works these days, the US will be blinking first, as Barack Obama is determined to be a positive world leader, the architect of a global climate change alliance between the developed and developing world. 

The Chinese story on carbon emissions and renewable energy is quite positive. The Chinese are saying that by 2020, “the country’s electricity capacity would double by 2020 to about 1,600 gigawatts, and 35 per cent of that would come from “low emission” power sources.

The WSJ’s environmental blog (May 21 2009) said that the Chinese clean energy numbers don’t add up. Maybe they don’t. But although there has been a substantial increase in greenhouse gases- sulphur as well as carbon- in China over recent years, there has been at the same time a closure of large numbers of small inefficient plants in power stations, steel works, cement plants etc.