China

China and the Environment: Some Progress on Lead Pollution

It’s a pleasure to be joining the excellent group here at Legal Planet.  My focus will largely be on issues related to China and its environmental and energy challenges. I returned to the U.S. last month after seven years working in China on environmental protection and legal reform (mostly for the Natural Resources Defense Council).  …

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Welcoming a New Blogger

We’re pleased to welcome Alex Wang to Legal Planet.  He is beginning a two-year term as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Berkeley Law School. Alex comes here following six years as a Senior Attorney and Director of the China Environmental Law Project for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He worked on environment and energy …

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Climate Change Impacts in China

The received wisdom used to be that climate change would have relatively little impact on China.  But that views seems outdated. Like the United States, China is large and geographically diverse; as such, the impacts of climate change vary across the country. For example, the Chinese government reports that the “frequency of heat waves in …

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China and Carbon Markets

In a surprising development, China may be  planning to create an internal carbon market a/k/a cap & trade.  According to Climate Wire, When professor Chen Hongbo tried to promote carbon trading in China three years ago, he found himself under fire. As developing countries like China aren’t obliged to limit the byproduct of their economic …

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Will the Future Be “Made in China”?

America used to b a place where the future happened first. Now we seem to be fight any kind of change, whether the issue is immigration, health care, the financial system, or energy.

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Too Cool to Avoid Blogging — The Straddling Bus

Critics of subways often argue, correctly, that they are very, very expensive.  They argue much less correctly that they aren’t worth it from a cost-benefit perspective.  (I’ll believe when they add in the subsidies for roads and automobiles, price auto traffic like they do with rail, and stop using tendentious examples to criticize high-speed rail).  …

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China’s Growth in Energy Usage Truly Alarming

Cara blogged earlier this week about the fact that U.S. emissions were down “a whopping 7 % in 2009.”  Just when you might have been thinking that we are headed in the right direction on the climate change front, today’s New York Times has a distressing story about Chinese emissions.  The take home point: Coal-fired electricity …

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China, Energy and the Economy

The New York Times reported — with seeming alarm — this weekend that China is now leading the world in the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels.  Yet shouldn’t we view this news as good for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?  Action by the U.S. to reduce emissions, while absolutely necessary for geopolitical …

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Riding the Energy Efficiency Wave

At the “Beyond Copenhagen Conference” at Berkeley yesterday, one of the clear messages was that energy efficiency is one of the most feasible routes forward on climate change.  Energy efficiency has great interest not only to U.S. consumers, but also to countries like China that are concerned about energy security.  The energy security issue is …

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Thankful for U.S., China News on Climate?

After yesterday’s news that Obama will attend the international climate talks in Copenhagen and commit to near term targets (discussed by Cara here and Dan here) we’re greeted today with the news that China’s prime minister Wen Jiabao will attend and commit to reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of China’s economy.  China’s commitment …

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