Environmental report spiked.

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shanghaiceltic

Board Royalty

Joined: Sep 20, 2005
Posts: 7588
Location: Perth WA
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Posted: July 24, 2007 - 01:09 PM
Post subject: Environmental report spiked.

I guess 'sensitive' means damning information?

China postpones pollution report
By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing

China has indefinitely postponed the release of an environmental report on the costs of economic development.

Several local governments are reported to have objected to the release of "sensitive" information about the pollution they cause.

Government officials from different departments also appear to disagree on how to calculate the figures.

But despite the setback, the man in charge of the scheme says the research should continue.

The project - to calculate how much money pollution costs China each year, the so-called "green gross domestic product" - was launched in 2004.

But the scheme seems never to have progressed smoothly.

Rare insight

Figures for 2004 - which revealed pollution cost China about 511bn yuan ($68bn, £33bn) or 3% of GDP - were not released until late last year.

Although officials have promised on a number of occasions to release the results for 2005, these figures have yet to materialise.

Now Wang Jinnan, the technical head of the project, has told the Beijing News that the release will be "postponed indefinitely".

"Some local governments are quite sensitive about the research and calculations for their provinces," he said.

"Separate trial provinces and municipalities have formally issued a request not to publish the calculation results, and have exerted pressure."

Mr Wang added that despite the difficulties, the research should continue.

There also appears to be a difference of opinion between the State Environmental Protection Administration and the National Bureau of Statistics.

Earlier this month, NBS head Xie Fuzhan seemed to cast doubt on whether a figure for the "green GDP" could even be calculated.

Wang's comments give a rare insight into the arguments going on within the government about how to achieve sustainable development.

They also show that even admitting how much damage pollution causes in China is a sensitive topic.

Last month, the Financial Times said the Chinese government had successfully removed controversial figures from a forthcoming World Bank report.

It said China had objected to statistics that revealed some 760,000 people died prematurely from air and water pollution each year.

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shanghaiceltic

Board Royalty

Joined: Sep 20, 2005
Posts: 7588
Location: Perth WA
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Posted: July 24, 2007 - 01:11 PM

China's green audit put on hold

By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 23/07/2007

China's attempts to project a new "green" image suffered a serious blow when it was revealed a revolutionary attempt to estimate the environmental cost of its runaway economic growth had been put on indefinite hold.

China's cities have been listed as the most polluted in the world - China's green audit put on hold

In a briefing to local newspapers, the scientist given the enormous task of calculating China's "green GDP" said the project had been effectively killed off by political opposition.

His outspoken denunciation of the barriers put in his way is another challenge to the leadership of President Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao, who have staked their local and international reputations on readjusting China's economic model to take more account of its social and environmental consequences.

Earlier this month, it was revealed the Chinese government was trying to stop the World Bank publishing details of the number of deaths caused by water and air pollution in China every year.

Officials also rejected a study by Dutch scientists suggesting that China's carbon emissions, the key component of global warming, had overtaken America's at the top of the world league table.

Now Wang Jinnan, chief engineer of Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning and team leader of the "green GDP" project, says publication of figures for 2005 has been put off indefinitely.

"Why they have not been published yet is because there is a big disagreement about both the content and how to publish it between environment administration and the statistics bureau," he said, in a rare insight into political infighting in China by one of its participants.

"If such situation goes on, our project team might be dismissed, which is what we want least of all."

Despite the appalling environmental consequences of China's growth, which have seen its cities listed as the most polluted in the world and riots triggered by factories pouring out poisonous fumes and effluent, the government has also won wide praise for its stated determination to tackle the problem.

A study named "The Beijing Consensus" by the New Labour-linked Foreign Policy Centre think-tank three years ago highlighted the move to "green GDP" accounting as a reason why developing countries should prefer a Chinese rather than American economic model.

According to the theory, China would take a more "holistic" approach to growth after publishing a figure for GDP, or gross domestic product, that by deducting the potential costs of pollution gave a more realistic account of how much richer the country was getting.

Figures were published last year for 2004, to great acclaim, though they showed annual pollution costs to be a huge pounds £35bn, or three per cent of the total size of the economy.

But this year published growth figures have continued to omit social elements and have soared to a point which some economists believe could lead to a crash.

Last week's quarterly figures said China's economy was growing by 11.9 per cent a year, almost four points ahead of the government's eight per cent target.

Prof Wang said that as well as opposition from the National Statistics Bureau, local officials, whose promotions are often directly linked to their success in promoting economic growth, had also put pressure on the government to stop publication of the green figures.

"In my view, the shock caused locally by green GDP and the fact it's so sensitive only proves how effective a measure it is," Prof Wang said, adding that he would go on studying the figures even if they were never published.

His admission of defeat was met with hardly concealed delight by the National Statistics Bureau. A spokesman pointed to a speech last week by its director, Xie Fuzhan, in which he said that "green GDP" was not an internationally recognised accounting figure.

Smog clouds reach United States

Smog from China is contributing to bad air quality and possibly even affecting the climate in parts of the western United States, according to researchers.

Vast clouds of dusty, industrial smog filled with carbon, sulphates and nitrates are drifting across the Pacific Ocean and gathering above cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

A team tracking the air at up to 30,000 feet as it moved across the Pacific discovered a new cloud developed every three to four days. Each was up to 300 miles wide and six miles deep, fast-moving and filled with pollutants.

Almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia, the scientists reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

By Catherine Elsworth

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horsemandk

StreetBeater

Joined: Mar 23, 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Shanghai
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Posted: July 24, 2007 - 11:53 PM

They already see the results in China, in t¡bet the average temperature is going up twice the speed of the rest of the world. The government knows that it has a serious problem and they're to blame!

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hc
Post Roaster

Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545

Posted: July 25, 2007 - 11:18 AM

Reminds me of when the japanese nuclear power plant companies lied about the safety record of their plants.
Man, will these people ever learn?

"They already see the results in China, in t¡bet the average temperature is going up twice the speed of the rest of the world."

That's scientifically easy to explain as t¡bet has a larger snow covered area that will melt, move out of the system and negate their cooling effect.

For anyone with just half a brain it would look like a "plot by the evil communists to destroy t¡betan culture" but hey, not so fast Jose.

Now "the government has a serious problem and they're to blame" is true, but you are completely ignoring the fact that most of the carbon already came from decades ago, mostly from countries with big automotive fleets (EUA and EU).

Obviously it's very convenient to blame China for the problem, and true, they need to improve. But this is a small part of the problem.

Kyoto protocol anyone?

Lowest MPG average since the 70s anyone?

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