Despite all the debate in places like Canada or Denmark, the reality is that the fate of global climate change will be decided by the actions of a few large countries - primarily the US and China, with India catching up fast. CO2 emissions in the US are, predictably, already huge. China and India (as well as other large developing countries) are growing quickly, but starting from a lower base. Nevertheless, China already makes up more than any other country save the US - though the EU collectively emits more. India is #5, behind Japan and Russia.
The bad news is that in both China and India, the super-majority of electrical generation comes from coal. The good news is that in both countries, the national governments have made committments to change course. China's official target is to have 20% of national energy come from sustainable sources by 2020, and India's government is one of the only developing nations I've heard of that is talking seriously about oil independence - something that's even better for the poor than it is for the rich countries.
So maybe it's no surprise that a wind turbine manufacturer from India would be such a rising star. Keith Bradsher (the bane of SUV manufacturers) has a hopeful article in the Times about Suzlon, now the fifth-largest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world. The article also talks about how, despite the expenses of wind power vs. coal, wind operators have found plenty of niches to fill in India's delapidated electrical infrastructure:
The company is a product in many ways of India's dysfunctional power distribution system. Electricity boards owned by state governments charge more than twice as much per kilowatt-hour for industrial users as in the United States - and still suffer blackouts almost every day, especially in northern India.... With natural gas prices climbing as well, wind turbines have become attractive to a wide range of businesses in India. Essar Group of Mumbai, a big industrial conglomerate active in shipping, steel and construction, is working on plans for a wind farm near Chennai, formerly Madras, after concluding that regulatory changes in India have made it financially attractive.
This should, I hope, put the lie to the Republican talking point that America can't follow Kyoto or other global warming initiatives because "the developing world isn't held to the same standard." China is already holding itself (in law, anyway) to a higher standard than the United States is, in fuel efficiency and renewable energy, and India is likely to follow.
It's not all smiles, however. Both India and China have incurred massive - simply heartbreaking - levels of ecological damage, that is in both countries rapidly making life unbearable in some places, as cities try to cope with water shortages, brownouts, and massive air pollution all at once. I hadn't heard as much news about India, but China's woes have long been familiar to me. A post at Gristmill summarizes India's problems, and they're much the same:
- Despite abundant rainfall, the average per capita availability of water for India's 1.1 billion population is the same as for the average Sudanese;...
- No Indian city can provide public water for more than a few hours a day, and the limited water available is often contaminated;
- More than 700 million people in India lack adequate basic sanitation facilities;
- An estimated 2.1 million children under the age of 5 die every year largely due to the lack of clean water, according to the United Nations.
If you wanted a mission in life, you could do worse than figuring out how to bring China, India, and the rest of the global poor in to the ranks of the wealthy without destroying the planet.
(Cross-posted at Ezra's)
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