2014年1月29日 星期三

義大利冒牌橄欖油



FOOD CHAINS

Extra Virgin Suicide


The adulteration of Italian olive oil.



nytimes.com


冒牌橄欖油@ 食物觀察:: 痞客邦PIXNET ::

旅居義大利的美國記者Tom Mueller,在2007年報導「冷壓初榨橄欖油以假亂真,Made in Italy假貨滿天飛」(SLIPPERY BUSINESS, the trade in adulterated olive oil. 2007紐約時報連結),揭穿貪婪的商人、橄欖油製造業、受賄的政府官員、被收買的品油師等等,如何緊密結合,透過高價、交易量驚人的「假」義大利冷壓初榨橄欖油,謀取暴利。
 
追蹤起點:1991年,義大利商人從土耳其運回2200公噸榛子油,謊稱「希臘橄欖油」報關進口,賣給義大利知名橄欖油製造商Riolio,Riolio將這批榛子油和一些橄欖油調合後,以橄欖油之名售出。
 
接下來幾年,許多知名大廠牌依樣畫葫蘆,銷售大量假義大利橄欖油到歐盟各國,甚至全球。橄欖油在所有植物油中最高價,其壓榨過程很困難,慢,成本極高,但要造假卻是輕而易舉,且低成本。其中又以最高等級的Extra Virgin 特級冷壓,為仿冒最大宗。
 
常見作弊方法:

一、以化學添加物,將非橄欖油的植物油(如葵花油)搭配少量橄欖油,轉變為特級初榨橄欖油。規模越大的橄欖油製造商,越有先進優異的研發人員,可以將物理化學性質仿到和真品一樣,氣味口感極像。各種實驗室化學檢測測不出假油,最資深的品油師也不一定品得出真假。加上官商勾結,義大利政府刪除「品油檢測小組」經費,更讓辨別真假難上加難。
二、非義大利產的橄欖油(西班牙、希臘)進口到義大利,裝瓶後以Made in Italy銷售全球。這種把「分裝地」當做「產地」的混淆步數,在義大利是合法的。
 
大廠以低價油改裝成高級處女油,賺大錢,讓傳統正規的榨油坊活不下去。在全球流通的「義大利特級初榨橄欖油」,究竟有多少比例是假貨,沒有客觀數據(不同報導顯示約五成到九成)。
 
點這裡)可讀到今年初英國媒體的相關報導,也教你如何挑油。但說真的,除非住在義大利鄉下榨油坊附近,可以直接去買,否則不是喝特級冷壓長大的你我,沒什麼選對的機會。
 
我的感想:難怪總覺得奧利塔Extra Virgin不夠純。今天特地研究包裝,上面寫"Packed by: Oitalia ..... Italy",原來如此,只是在義大利裝瓶。再聞聞味道:已經開瓶半年以上,幾乎見底,氣味沒變糟。代表不會氧化,這大概就是先進科技的效果吧!
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2014年1月28日 星期二

德國奶牛放屁導致甲烷超標爆炸


德國奶牛放屁導致甲烷超標爆炸

更新時間 2014年1月28日, 格林尼治標準時間21:33
奶牛
一頭牛每天平均可以排放約500立升的甲烷
德國警方表示,德國中部小鎮拉斯道夫(Rasdorf)的一家農場上的奶牛牛舍因冬季通風不良而導致空氣中牛屁帶來的甲烷含量過高而引發了爆炸。
據報,爆炸損壞了牛棚屋頂;有數頭奶牛也在爆炸中受傷。
90頭奶牛每日在這座牛棚中打嗝放屁,排放出了大量的甲烷和氨氣。
警方在公布調查結果時稱,由於牛棚空氣中甲烷和氨氣濃度過高,結果一次偶然靜電反應的火花引發了爆炸事件。
警方告訴當地媒體說,第一時間趕到現場的急救人員對牛棚內空氣進行了及時採樣分析。
據信,一頭牛每日可以排放約500立升的甲烷。
(編譯:晧宇 責編:李莉)

2014年1月25日 星期六

連續快步走的優點


連續快步走遠離糖尿病、減輕體重-----


      一、走路開啟六扇健康大門                                            
                                                                           
       1、心臟健康的大門                                                   
          對大多數人來說,走路是預防心臟病最簡單和最方便的方法。         
       早在上世紀20年代初,美國心臟學會奠基人、著名心臟病學家懷特博士就提  
       出,步行鍛煉能預防動脈粥樣硬化,                                    
       並首創了以走路作為心臟病和心梗病人康復治療的方法,取得了良好效果。  
       不久之前美國一項對1645名65歲以上老人進行的研究發現:與每周步行少于1 
       小時的老人相比,                                                    
       每周步行4小時以上者,其心血管住院費減少69%,死亡率減少73%。         
                                                                           
       2、大腦健康的大門                                                   
         依據  10月13日路透社報導,                                      
       美國匹茲堡大學研究表明,要防大腦萎縮、老年癡呆,途徑之一就是保證每周
       步行不少於9.6公里。                                                 
       因為步行不僅可以增加大腦體積,也會讓記憶力出現問題的機率降低50%。   
                                                                           
       3、遠離糖尿病的大門                                                 
         其實控制糖尿病並不難,研究表明一星期堅持3天,每天在30分鐘內步行3
       公里,                                                              
       糖尿病的發病率就可降低25%;周堅持4天,可降低33%;每周5天,則能降低  
       42%。                                                               
                                                                           
       4、骨骼健康的大門                                                   
         走路能讓骨骼更合理地支撐身體重量,從而減少骨骼內礦物質的流失,預
       防、改善骨質疏鬆。                                                  
       此外據美國《關節炎和風濕病》雜志報道,與跑步相比,走路不僅對關節的壓
       力小,而且還能延緩關節功能的衰退。                                  
                                                                           
       5、減輕體重的大門                                                   
         散步每30分鐘消耗75千卡的熱量。                                  
       減肥要靠長期、規律的運動,偶爾一次劇烈運動的效果只能持續48個小時。  
       而且過量運動有時會造成猝死,很危險,只有步行最合適。                
                                                                           
       6、長壽的大門                                                       
         雷潔瓊95歲了,電視臺採訪時,問她如何能做到身體這樣好,她說唯一的
       愛好就是天天走路,                                                  
       還有陳立夫,為什麼能活到100歲?也靠的是每天步行。                   
         研究顯示每天步行超過30分鐘的人,不管體內脂肪含量有多高,他們的長
       壽幾率都比其他人高4倍。                                             
                                                                           
       二、品質比數量更重要                                                
         閒庭信步、低頭走路、背著手溜達、把手揣在兜裡,兩臂緊貼在身邊……  
       雖然都在走路,但專家指出,這些並不是正確的走路方式,對健康的功效也不
       大。                                                                
       在日本,專門有人教大家怎麼走路。從“在哪兒走”到“怎麼走”、“走多長時   
       間”都有一定的講究。                                                 
                                                                           
       1、走路的地方最好有樹                                               
         步行的最好地點是公園,實在沒時間去,也要找道路兩邊有樹或綠化帶的
       地方走。                                                            
       專家指出走路雖然是種低運動量的有氧運動,但最好選擇空氣新鮮的地方,離
       馬路越遠越好。                                                      
                                                                           
       2、穿的鞋越輕越好                                                   
         走路時最好穿寬鬆一些的衣服,襪子也以棉質較厚的為好,可以起到一定
       的緩衝作用。                                                        
       尤其鞋子非常重要,越輕越好。                                        
       可以選擇慢跑鞋因為這樣的鞋後跟比較牢固,能使腳踵穩定,不易傾斜。    
       後跟的上方有適當突起的襯舌,能起到保護跟腱的作用。                  
       鞋頭最好又高又圓,才不會夾住腳趾,或造成趾甲充血。                  
                                                                           
       3、走路時要抬頭挺胸                                                 
         步行時身體太放鬆,是沒什麼效果的。                              
       抬頭、挺胸、目要平視,軀幹自然伸直;收腹,身體重心稍向前移;        
       上肢與下肢配合協調,步伐適中,兩腳落地有節奏感,才是正確的走路姿勢。
                                                                           
         此外美國《預防》雜誌有文章指出,走路時把意念放在腳上,感覺腳跟到
       腳尖逐一踩踏到地面,                                                
       能起到轉移注意力、放鬆精神的作用。                                  
       如果想瘦身,最好走坡路或爬樓梯;如果是走平路,要把注意力放在收縮小腹
       上,走路時臀部適當地向前扭動,                                      
       讓腹部肌肉承擔更多的力量。                                          
                                                                           
       4、每天至少走1個小時                                                
         美國哈佛大學研究稱,每天的走路時間加起來最好不要低於1個小時。   
       以中等速度(每分鐘90步至120步)來算,走1個多小時,路程在1萬步左右、5公
       里至10公里之間比較合適。                                            
       此外晚飯後一小時再去走路比較適宜。                                  
       “飯後百步走,能活九十九”的觀點並不科學,因為剛進食後,血液主要分配在
       消化系統,                                                          
       立即運動,會使消化系統血液流往肢體,不利於食物消化和營養吸收。      
                                                                           
       5、走路後最好微微出汗                                               
         步行運動並不追求大汗淋漓的效果,最好是鍛煉完微微出汗。          
       要想看走路的運動強度夠不夠,可以自己測一下心率,一般來說走路後心率  
       +年齡=170左右比較合適。                                             
                                                                        

只有開發而沒有環境/ 中科三期二階環評 環保署創意十足 法治零分(陸詩薇)

焦點評論:中科三期二階環評 環保署創意十足 法治零分(陸詩薇)
 
中科三期廠商邊施工邊環評作法惹議。圖為環團抗議。資料照片
后里老農提起的中科三期民國99年環評撤銷訴訟在台北高等行政法院審理中,依照最高行政法院的發回意旨,本案環評大概又即將面臨第二次被法院撤銷的窘境。然而環保署21日作成一個創意十足但法治零分的決議:廢止中科三期99年一階環評,同時讓本案「進入二階環評」,但在二階環評完成前,99年的舊環評持續有效,好讓中科三期七星園區的友達光電和桑緹亞兩家廠商可以繼續生產不受影響。
只要稍有《環評法》常識的人就知道,環境影響評估制度最核心的精神就是「預防原則」和「預警原則」,在開發行為進行「之前」,事先評估開發行為會對環境造成什麼風險、風險是否可接受。所以《環評法》第14條才會規定未完成環評前,不得為開發之許可,第22條更嚴格處罰應環評而未環評就逕行開發者,甚至最高可處單位負責人三年以下有期徒刑。 

全然不顧環境破壞

中科三期95年的環評第一次遭法院撤銷失效後,環保署不但花費98萬公帑刊登廣告辱罵法院,一邊以「停工,不停產」的歪理,讓園區公共設施停工,但廠商可以持續施工營運,又一邊急就章再次通過環評,徹底踐踏《環評法》的預防╱預警原則。后里農民與環保團體再次起訴請求法院撤銷環評,我們主張的理由之一,就是「邊施工邊環評,使風險變成實害」,而這個主張也為最高行政法院接受,並成為發回更審的重要理由。環評本是用來決定開發案是否可以進行的前提,所以《環評法》第11條要求開發單位在環評書中記載「環境影響預測」,如今開發廠商已經老神在在,正常營運,污水照排、廢氣照放,還有什麼好預測的?環保署又豈敢在二階環評認定這些廠商不准開發?
環保署與國科會從來不思檢討,為何法院一而再再而三 站在人民這邊,反而剛愎自用,只想著如何保障廠商營運無虞,全然不顧法治與環境破壞。環保署宣布中科三期進二階環評。 

邊施工邊環評堪虞

誠如另一位律師團成員詹順貴律師1月23日《蘋果日報》投書所言,根本不是出於對台灣土地與人民的保護,而是為了保護廠商可以持續生產營利,更是為了保護馬政府年底選情不受中科三期環評再次被撤銷的判決衝擊。
然我們相信,人民與司法終就會讓馬政府為這種短視近利的惡劣手段付出代價。既然「邊施工邊環評」已經遭最高行政法院明確指責有瑕疵,可想而知,只要友達光電和桑緹亞這些廠商在環評階段不停工,即使環保署宣示讓中科三期進入十階環評,未來一定也難逃再次被法院撤銷的命運;終將證明一個心中只有開發而沒有環境的環境保護署,玩弄法律與人民的結果,只是偷雞不著蝕把米。
令人痛心的是,蝕掉的這把米,不僅是環署自己的公信力,而是整體環評法治的崩毀,更是真實生產稻米養育我們的台灣土地。 
台灣蠻野心足生態協會專職律師、中科三期案后里農民義務律師團成員 

2014年1月22日 星期三

講到中國的問題,我想到的是第一個問題是環境問題。

2014年01月15日 14:50 PM沒有法治的反腐難言樂觀作者:中國社科院美國所研究員資中筠

【編者按】在1月10日天則經濟研究所舉辦的《新年期許》論壇上,資中筠先生對中國的反腐、法治、外交和社會啟蒙分別表達了自己看法和期待,本文系她的發言實錄。作者本人審閱後,授權FT中文網全文刊發。
講到中國的問題,我想到的是第一個問題是環境問題。環境問題還不光是人,不光是中國的政治問題。目前中國如果要是再不注意環境,如此地污染下去,我們看不到生態的拐點。水資源污染的嚴重性可能超過空氣,空氣大家可以看得到,但水污染卻不然。現在中國已經基本沒有青山綠水了,這是非常嚴重的問題。我最希望的就是2014年執政者能夠把主要的資源和注意力,切切實實轉到環境領域,不然民眾根本住不下去了。
第二個,目前的反腐方式難說樂觀。現在因為中央的反腐舉措,好像導致經濟一片簫條,飯店開不下去了,各行業都受影響,據說連做日曆的都破產了。這說明一個什麼現象?說明中國的民間消費力量非常之弱,只能靠官消費,官的消費實際上用的還是納稅人的錢,這是不正常的消費市場。所以不能靠明年的官員消費反彈和大吃大喝來繁榮市場。所謂拉動內需,是應該真正把民間消費力量、老百姓的消費力量拉動起來,那麼市場才是靠大多數民眾支撐的,而不是靠官員奢華的大吃大喝、貪污腐化支撐的,才是一個正常的消費市場。怎麼做到這一點?就是落實決議裡面對於經濟改革的好多積極的措施。



http://hcbooks.blogspot.tw/2011/02/blog-post_22.html

2014年1月21日 星期二

中國將舉國灰濛濛 The East is grey/ 霧霾噬中國 50萬人早死


 

霧霾噬中國 50萬人早死

霧霾成為困擾全中國的空污問題。圖為上海市霧霾情形。CFP
【大陸中心╱綜合報導】霧霾已成為中國最頭痛的空污問題,從華北至華東、華南,甚至連西藏都淪陷,中國專家估計,中國每年有近50萬人恐因空污而早死,香港《蘋果日報》近日走訪北京、廣州和上海等地,目擊民眾在霧霾陰影下的生活情形。

白色濾膜變灰黃

北 京市媒體界名人洪晃曾形容,如今的北京是個「毒氣罐」,環保人士鍾峪更能證實這一點。她背著一台俗稱「機器肺」的PM2.5(指大氣中直徑小於或等於 2.5微米的細懸浮微粒)採集樣本機器,在北京跑馬拉松進行測試,結果令她震驚,跑步6小時後,儀器的白色濾膜已變成灰黃色,她無奈說:「如果空氣不好, 跑步對我究竟是健康還是不健康?」
鍾峪表示:「PM2.5跟吸菸一樣,沒有人能告訴你吸幾支香菸就會得癌症。」她去年8月從北京遷往雲南定居,本以為空氣比較好,豈料雲南也有霧 霾。女攝影師陳琬旅居德國,每年有一半的時間住在廣州市,以前她從住所可遠眺白雲山,但如今經常看不到,「如果看不到,就是那天的空氣品質不理想。」陳琬 說,若5年內中國空氣品質無法改善,她打算長居歐洲。
報導指出,2012年因暴露在PM2.5污染物而死亡的北京民眾,高達2589人,比2005年美國卡崔娜颶風的死亡人數還多。中國衛生部前部長陳竺也曾坦言,空氣污染將導致中國每年有近50萬人恐早死,這個數字令人怵目驚心。

 

China and the environment

The East is grey

China is the world’s worst polluter but largest investor in green energy. Its rise will have as big an impact on the environment as on the world economy or politics


ALL industrial nations one day hit an environmental turning-point, an event that dramatises to the population the ecological consequences of growth. In America that event occurred in 1969 when the Cuyahoga river in Ohio, thick with pollutants and bereft of fish, caught fire. America’s Environmental Protection Agency was founded the next year. Strict environmental laws passed by Japan in the 1970s followed the realisation that poisonous mercury spilled from a plastics factory was claiming thousands of lives around the bay of Minamata.
The fetid smog that settled on Beijing in January 2013 could join the ranks of these game-changing environmental disruptions. For several weeks the air was worse than in an airport smoking lounge. A swathe of warm air in the atmosphere settled over the Chinese capital like a duvet and trapped beneath it pollution from the region’s 200 coal-fired power plants and 5m cars. The concentration of particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less, hit 900 parts per million—40 times the level the World Health Organisation deems safe. You could smell, taste and choke on it.
Public concern exploded. China’s hyperactive microblogs logged 2.5m posts on “smog” in January alone. The dean of a business school said thousands of Chinese and expatriate businessmen were packing their bags because of the pollution. Beijing is one of China’s richest cities. Before the 2008 Olympic games it had relocated its smelliest industries to surrounding provinces. If anywhere should be cleaning itself up, it is the capital. Yet even Communist bigwigs, opening their curtains each morning near the Forbidden City, could not avoid the toxic fog.
Journey to the West
The “airpocalypse” injected a new urgency into local debate about the environment—and produced a green-policy frenzy a few months later. In three weeks from the middle of June, the government unveiled a series of reforms to restrict air pollution. It started the country’s first carbon market, made prosecuting environmental crimes easier and made local officials more accountable for air-quality problems in their areas. It also said China—meaning companies as well as government—would spend $275 billion over the next five years cleaning up the air. Even by Chinese standards that is serious money, equivalent to Hong Kong’s GDP or twice the size of the annual defence budget.
Is this China’s turning-point? Many environmentalists, both in the country and outside, fear it is too little, too late. A study released by America’s National Academy of Sciences in July found that air pollution in the north of China reduces life expectancy by five-and-a-half years. The rivers are filthy, the soil contaminated. The government has long known this and attempted to clean things up. Yet still the smog comes.
And there is something else in the air, less immediately damaging but with a far bigger global impact. China’s greenhouse-gas emissions were about 10% of the world’s total in 1990. Now they are nearer 30%. Since 2000 China alone has accounted for two-thirds of the global growth in carbon-dioxide emissions. This will be very hard to reverse. While America and Europe are cutting their emissions by 60m tonnes a year combined, China is increasing its own by over 500m tonnes. This makes it a unique global threat.
Nonsense, say Chinese officials. China is not responsible for the build-up of greenhouse gases. The West is. There are environmental problems, true, but China is simply following a pattern set by Britain, America and Japan: “grow first, clean up later”. China grew unusually fast but it is now cleaning up unusually fast, too. Its efforts to rein in pollution are undervalued; its investments in wind and solar power put others to shame; its carbon emissions will peak sooner than people expect. China will one day do for zero-carbon energy what it has already done for consumer electronics—put it within reach of everyone. It will not be a threat to the planet but the model for how to clean it up.
China is broadly right about one thing: its environmental problems do have historical parallels. With the exception of Chongqing, the largest municipality, most Chinese cities are no more polluted than Japan’s were in 1960 (see chart 1). Excluding spikes like that in Beijing this year, air quality is improving at about the same rate as Japan’s did in the 1970s.
Other environmental indicators are worse, however, and it is not clear whether they are improving as fast. A 2006 survey found that almost 10% of farmland was contaminated with heavy metals, such as cadmium. Whether a recent nationwide soil survey showed an improvement is hard to say, as the Ministry of Environmental Protection promptly declared the findings a state secret. The discovery of rice tainted with cadmium in Guangdong this year triggered panic buying of Thai rice.
China’s wildlife is under particular threat. The China Species Red List, an official document, classified almost 40% of the country’s mammals as “threatened” in 2004. An unusually wide range of habitats—China is exceptionally diverse in this respect—is being degraded by industrial development.
The Water Margin
The worst problem is water. Pictures of China often show green and watery landscapes. But most of northern China is as dry as straw. “Severe water stress” is usually defined as access to less than 1,000 cubic metres of water per person per year. For China the figure is just 450 cubic metres. The national average is bad enough but it hides an even more alarming regional disparity. Four-fifths of the water is in the south—mainly in the Yangzi river basin (see map). Half the people and two-thirds of the country’s farmland are in the parched north—mainly in the Yellow river basin. In Beijing there is just 100 cubic metres per person per year. The water table there has fallen by 300 metres in two decades. Wen Jiabao, a former prime minister, was barely exaggerating when he said water shortages “threaten the very survival of the Chinese nation”.
Such shortages have been a problem for centuries but they are being exacerbated now by pollution. The Yellow River Conservancy Commission, a government body, surveyed the “mother river” of China and found that for a third of its length the water was too polluted for use in agriculture. The housing ministry’s chief engineer for water safety says only half the water sources in urban areas are fit to drink.
Don’t drink the water; don’t even touch the water
Severe though China’s problems with water, soil and air are, they are not different in kind from those of other nations in the past. As Pan Jiahua of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) puts it, “We’re following the US, Japan and UK and because of inertia we don’t have the capacity to stop quickly.”
China’s impact on the climate, though, is unique. Its economy is not only large but also resource-hungry. It accounts for 16% of world output but consumes between 40% and 50% of the world’s coal, copper, steel, nickel, aluminium and zinc. It also imports half the planet’s tropical logs and raises half its pigs.
The country’s energy use is similarly gargantuan. This is in part because, under Mao, the use of energy was recklessly profligate. China’s consumption of energy per unit of GDP tripled in 1950-78—an unprecedented “achievement”. In the early 1990s, at the start of its period of greatest growth, China was still using 800 tonnes of coal equivalent (tce, a unit of energy) to produce $1m of output, far more than other developing countries. Energy efficiency has since improved; China used 390tce per $1m in 2009. But that was still more than the global average of 300tce and far more than Germany, which used only 173tce.
Despite a huge hydroelectric programme, most of this energy comes from burning coal on a vast scale. China currently burns about half the world’s supplies. In 2006 it surpassed America in carbon-dioxide emissions from energy (see chart 2). By 2014 or 2015 it will emit twice America’s total. Between 1990 and 2050 its cumulative emissions from energy will amount to some 500 billion tonnes—roughly the same as those of the whole world from the beginning of the industrial revolution to 1970. And the total is what matters. The climate reacts to the stock of carbon, not to annual rises.
These emissions are adding to a build-up of carbon already pushed to unprecedented heights by earlier industrialisations. When Britain began the process in the 18th century, the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide level was 280 parts per million (ppm). When Japan was industrialising fastest in the late 1950s, it had risen a bit, to 315ppm. This year the level hit 400ppm. Avoiding dangerous climate change is widely taken to mean keeping below 450ppm, although there are significant uncertainties surrounding this figure. At current rates that threshold will be reached in 2037. China is likely to be the largest emitter between now and then.
About a quarter of China’s carbon emissions is produced making goods for export. If the carbon embodied in those goods were marked against the ledgers of the importing countries China would look a little less damaging, the rich world a lot less virtuous. But even allowing for that, China is not playing catch-up any more. It is doing more damage to the stability of the global climate than any other country.
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
China will suffer as much as anywhere. Already its deserts are spreading, farmland is drying out and crop yields are plateauing. Climate change may make matters worse. It has 80m people living at sea level who are vulnerable to rising oceans and higher storm surges. And as heavy manufacturing and mining move from coastal areas to poorer western provinces like Xinjiang and Tibet, the shift may increase environmental damage. These areas have particularly fragile ecosystems and degradation could quickly become irreversible.
Some of those problems may not become acute for a while. But the nation’s immediate environmental woes are already challenging the basic contract between rulers and people: rising living standards in exchange for acquiescence in the Communist Party’s monopoly of power.
The costs of environmental and natural-resource degradation, according to the World Bank, are the equivalent of 9% of GDP, an enormous amount which is dragging down the long-term growth rate. The biggest downdrafts include health damage from air pollution and the degradation of soil nutrients. And since the party takes credit for the benefits of growth, it gets blamed for the costs of pollution. As Ma Jun, China’s best-known environmental activist, puts it, “Everyone knows the link between the environment and their own health.” None of the challenges facing the new generation of leaders is bigger than those posed by the environment.
China is already doing a lot to meet that challenge, on paper at least. Even before the Beijing smog settled, the government had issued 20 significant anti-pollution laws and tens of thousands of decrees. It established a Ministry for Environmental Protection in 2008 and at the last Communist Party conference in 2012, added the environment to the four “platforms”—basic beliefs that define what the party stands for. In China, that sort of signal matters.
But the new leaders worry at least as much about faltering short-term growth as about environmental degradation. The prime minister, Li Keqiang, reflected these conflicting demands in his inaugural address in March, when he said: “It is no good having prosperity and wealth while the environment deteriorates,”—but then said it was just as bad to have “poverty and backwardness in the midst of clear waters and verdant mountains.”
In the West it is often said that one of China’s chief advantages in dealing with climate change is that its leaders can impose tough policies that democratic systems shy away from. Mr Wen once said the government would use “an iron hand” to make the country more energy-efficient. But in environmental matters the government does not have an iron hand.
If local officials—mayors and provincial or county party secretaries—do not like a policy, they can quietly ignore it. As an official in Guangdong once said about pollution controls, “We don’t think these decisions apply to us.” The bosses of large state-owned companies often wield as much power as the ministers who supervise them. Occult systems of patronage matter more than apparent hierarchies. In the Chinese system, the centre proposes; provinces and counties dispose.
The system is changing to reflect environmental concerns. Guizhou is one of the poorest parts of China. It also sits atop large reserves of coal. A few years ago it would have happily mined them. But in formulating a new development plan to catch up with the rest of the country, it is relying more on imported natural gas from Myanmar—partly to fulfil the various anti-pollution diktats from the centre.
But change is slow. One of the ways the centre can directly influence local officials is through the criteria used when judging who gets promoted. Until now the economy was the most important factor. Environmental considerations have been added over the years, albeit with fuzzy measurements. President Xi Jinping is trying to make greenery more important by saying officials will be held responsible for environmental problems in an area, even after they have been promoted out of it.
So far, though, tinkering with the promotion system has not worked. According to a study for America’s National Bureau of Economic Research, mayors who spent money on environmental projects (pollution-treatment plants and the like) in 2000-09 had a lower chance of promotion than those investing in infrastructure that boosted the economy, such as roads. Growth remains the main consideration locally and it is not yet clear that the centre can change this.
Dream of the Green Chamber
In the West public opinion put the environment on the map, forcing governments and firms to clean up. But it is not clear this will happen soon in China. True, the public is worried. Figures from CASS suggest a quarter of demonstrations are about the environment. They cannot be put down as easily as peasant protests: they are often middle-class, urban affairs which might one day become a nationwide movement. If China’s leaders want a reminder of why this prospect might matter, they need only look at the former Soviet Union. In all but one of the European countries that split away from the USSR, the political parties that formed the first governments began life as environmental movements.
But the government can downplay public pressure for the moment because the environment remains, it seems, a second-tier concern. According to Xinhua, China’s news agency, an opinion poll in February 2012 found that worries about food safety came third, after income inequality and soaring house prices. In March a poll in China Youth Daily, a party newspaper, also put food safety third, after corruption and income distribution; and in November 2012 China Daily said 52.6% of respondents set environmental degradation fourth on their list of anxieties, after the wealth gap, corruption and the power of vested interests.
Moreover, most environmental protests are local rather than national. Demonstrators complain about this city’s air or that city’s water, but not about China’s overall situation. Activists like Mr Ma concede that as a mass movement environmentalism is in its infancy.
The wider implication is that far from being good at solving environmental problems, the Chinese political system is no better than anyone else’s. The top is ambivalent, the middle sceptical and the grassroots weak and divided.
Given all that, the remarkable thing is not what China has failed to do but what it has achieved, especially in reining in carbon dioxide. Its carbon emissions are growing at half the rate of GDP, a bit better than the global average. China has also boosted investment in renewable energy far more than any other country. It has the world’s most ambitious plans for building new nuclear power stations.
To combine economic growth and environmental improvement, China has concentrated on reducing carbon intensity—emissions per unit of GDP (see chart 3). This fell by about 20% in the past five years and the government is aiming to cut it by 40-45% by 2020, compared with 2005. Most of the improvement is coming from a scheme to bully 1,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into using energy more efficiently—arguably the single most important climate policy in the world.
The enterprises sign a contract with the central government agreeing to meet efficiency targets, abide by new building codes and install environmental-control equipment. This helped Chinese cement-makers (who produce as much of the stuff as the rest of the world put together) reduce the energy needed to make a tonne of cement by 30% in the ten years to 2009. The scheme has now been expanded to 10,000 SOEs, covering the majority of polluters.
China is also generating energy more efficiently. According to the World Bank, better operations and the closure of clapped-out plants helped to push the average thermal efficiency of its coal-fired power stations from 31% in 2000 to 37% in 2010; America’s remained flat, at 33%.
The other big energy change is China’s vast renewables programme. The government aims to get 20% of its energy from such sources by 2020, the same target as in richer Europe. The largest slice will come from hydropower, which accounted for around 15% of total energy in 2012 (with nuclear power at 2%). But the big rise comes from wind and solar: the government will roughly double investment in these two in 2011-16, compared with 2006-10. Chinese investment in renewables puts others to shame. It amounted to $67 billion in 2012, says REN21, a network of policymakers, more than three times what Germany spent. The aim is to have 100 gigawatts of wind capacity and 35 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2015.
Even by the standards of renewables, though, much of this is inefficient. China and America have almost the same windpower capacity but America gets 40% more energy from it. Chinese wind farms—classic creations of central planning—are often not plugged in or create power surges so big that the electricity grid cannot cope and they have to be unplugged again.
Dirty coal will remain China’s most important fuel for the foreseeable future (hopes of a shale-gas revolution may be constrained by water shortages). Coal is cheaper and, as Nat Bullard of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a firm of market analysts, points out, it provides “baseload power”—continuous energy unaffected by a lack of sun or wind. Its cost advantages will shrink, though. China is the world’s lowest-cost producer of solar panels. Mr Bullard says solar power should become competitive without subsidies by 2020.
He can see the future and it’s black
As well as these supply-side measures, the government is also trying to reduce emissions by capping them and introducing a carbon price. The idea is unpopular in some quarters and is being introduced in stages—slipped in, as it were.
Along with reducing the targets it sets for energy intensity, China is setting up a pilot carbon-trading scheme in seven cities and provinces. Next, it plans to cap the amount of energy consumed, probably at 4 billion tce in 2015. That would require a sharp reduction in energy growth. The third stage is to turn the energy cap into a national emissions target. This is supposed to happen in 2016-20. The aim is to pave the way, in 2021-25, for provincial carbon budgets and a national carbon-trading system.
There is a lot of scepticism about whether this will happen as planned. But the basic aim—to rein in the rise of carbon emissions more quickly—may be met. A few years ago Chinese politicians said such emissions would go on rising at least until 2050. Now mainstream Chinese opinion says the peak will come in 2030-40. Academics at the Energy Research Institute and CASS reckon it could come earlier—in 2025-30. Compared with what seemed likely a few years ago, that would be a big achievement.
But compared with what China needs to do, it would not be enough. As a rough guide the world needs to restrict emissions to a little over 700 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between now and 2050, if global temperatures are not to increase by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The Stockholm Environment Institute calculates that, if China continues on its current path, it would emit almost two-thirds of that budget—roughly 450 billion tonnes— on its own. If it tries to live within its share of the global budget (which would be 220 billion tonnes, assuming countries’ shares of total emissions stay at current levels), then its emissions would have to fall to zero within ten years of a 2025 peak. This is inconceivable.
Call to Arms
The world appears destined to break that 700 billion tonne budget quite dramatically. How much of the overrun will be due to China? Over the next 20 years, it will build the equivalent of an America’s worth of new houses; the switch from rural to urban life roughly doubles energy use and carbon emissions per person. If China reaches the current living standards of industrial countries, the number of cars on its roads will rise tenfold.
Against that, and more importantly, the structure of the economy will change. Services account for 43% of GDP, a much lower proportion than in other middle-income countries. China can reasonably expect to increase the share of services, which are far less polluting, over the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, China could do even more to help itself. Its pricing of basic resources is skewed. Water and fertilisers in particular are too cheap, discouraging saving of its most precious resource. The country relies too much on command-and-control mechanisms and is hampered by bureaucratic complexity.
Yet China also has advantages in addressing its—and the world’s—environmental problems. Its leaders understand the challenge of climate change better than their predecessors and perhaps their international peers, too. They are good at taking action on high-priority issues. Because the country is a late developer, it should be able to learn from the mistakes of others—and not build energy-guzzling cities. China has a huge domestic market, cheap capital and sunny, windy deserts: the ideal environment to build a zero-carbon energy system. It is the silver lining of a very dark cloud. If China cannot do it, no one can.