China
China Vice-President Xi Jinping in America: some thoughts on US-China environmental collaboration
Some sobering developments confront us on the climate and environment front as Vice-President (and future head of China) Xi Jinping prepares to visit the United States this week. Despite an unprecedented push to reduce pollution and develop cleaner energy sources, China’s emissions of greenhouse gases and traditional pollutants have continued to soar. Chinese annual greenhouse …
CONTINUE READINGAir Pollution Levels in China
The Economist commissioned a study of particulate pollution in China, using estimates based on satellite data. The results are predictably grim: World Health Organisation guidelines suggest that PM2.5 levels above ten micrograms per cubic metre are unsafe. The boffins have found (as the map shows) that almost every Chinese province has levels above that. Indeed, …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy we have the EPA
Air quality in Beijing over the past week has reached horrifically bad levels. The U.S. Embassy’s air quality tracker went from “Hazardous” to “Beyond Index” on Dec. 4. Check out the depressing details via Treehugger and France 24. It looks like the Great Smog of London from 1952. England passed its Clan Air Act 4 …
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CONTINUE READINGCap-and-Trade is Alive and Well
Comprehensive climate policy is going nowhere at the federal level. That’s obvious. But U.S. inaction doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is following the U.S. lead. Instead, around the world, countries are adopting policies to transition to cleaner energy sources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And cap-and-trade systems are as popular a …
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CONTINUE READINGLooking Ahead to Durban
Unlike the Copenhagen climate conference which had enormous publicity and great expectations, the Durban conference next month is coming up very quietly. Yet, given the 2012 terminus of the Kyoto Protocol, it’s a very important event. Some degree of progress at Durban is important to keep the UNFCC process alive; otherwise, the action is likely …
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CONTINUE READINGCheap Solar Provides Some Reason for Climate Optimism
Solar energy is getting really cheap. And that fact could alter the landscape of energy production and the course of climate change in ways we can only begin to imagine today. One of the conundrums of climate change is trying to predict the future. This difficulty in prediction may be especially true with respect to …
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CONTINUE READINGApple’s China Problem
There has been an interesting confluence of stories in the press about Apple as the release of iPhone 5 approaches this week. The New York Times recently ran a story, entitled “You Love Your iPhone, Literally,” about how test subjects looking at sounds and images of the iPhone exhibited heightened activity in the parts of …
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CONTINUE READINGPanel – Environmental Law in China: Implications for Bay Area Business (September 27, 2011)
China Dialogue, Asia Society, K&L Gates, and the Business Council on Climate Change are sponsoring a panel on Environmental Law in China: Implications for Bay Area Business on September 27, 2011 in San Francisco. I will be on the panel with a terrific group of speakers who work on climate change, environmental law, and green/clean-tech …
CONTINUE READINGIs USTR Trying to Increase China’s Carbon Emissions?
Our friends Daniel Firger and Michael Gerrard at Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law have written a useful new paper analyzing two important pending WTO climate cases. Of these, the more important appears to be DS 419, in which the United States is challenging China’s wind energy subsidies. Firger and Gerrard note that …
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CONTINUE READINGGreen litigation in China today
For those interested in the state of environmental litigation in China, China Dialogue, a bilingual site on China’s environment, ran an excellent series of articles last month on the topic. I opened the series with an article entitled “Green litigation in China today.” Here is an excerpt. Environmental litigation is difficult business in China. Even …
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