Environment & Climate Change

Wei Peng discusses how long-distance electricity transmission could play a key role in reducing China’s air pollution.

"Getting individuals to take responsibility for their energy consumption is not just an issue of building short-term awareness of a cause. Rather, these campaigns require changes to long-standing habits, perhaps through constant reminders that emphasize individual action. Climate action therefore raises questions of both the desired intensity and frequency of messages in promoting behavioral change."

In the cynical world of politics it is important, just occasionally, to give credit where it is due. The commitments on carbon emissions announced on Wednesday by President Barack Obama of the US and President Xi Jinping of China, supported by the significant diplomacy of Secretary of State John Kerry, are both environmentally substantive and politically influential. Between them, these countries account for 44 per cent of global carbon emissions – a share that is still rising.

China's political, economic and foreign policy over the next decade is not only fundamental to the country itself, but also to the wider Asia-Pacific region and – increasingly -- the world beyond.

China already represents 16 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), rising to 28 percent by 2030. China is also by far the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Furthermore, continued maritime boundary disputes in both the East and South China seas are a significant continuing factor in the region's underlining strategic instability. How China deals with each of these challenges is therefore of significance to us all.

"...[C]limate change is essentially unobservable by the public. On a daily basis, we observe the weather, not the climate. This makes it less likely that public opinion will force action the way it did 50 years ago when black smoke rose from industrial smokestacks, and chemicals and raw sewage were dumped untreated into rivers, famously causing one to catch fire."

"Given this description of what happened (and did not happen) in Warsaw, is there any cause for optimism regarding the path ahead? There is cause at least for cautious optimism, because of a singular reality — the growing convergence of interests between the two most important countries in the world when it comes to climate change and international policy to address it, namely, China and the United States."

"Although the country has successfully imported model environmental policies, it has yet to develop the complex institutional infrastructure needed to make them work, especially an independent judiciary, a capable bureaucracy, and effective co-operation between central and local governments."

"A legitimate US climate policy regime enables other countries to create their own domestic policies. Many countries have long been ready to act on climate change, but struggled to justify climate policies to their own people when the United States, the largest pollution emitter in the world, was not seriously pursuing emissions reductions."