Gore: China in for more pressure on pollutionGore: China in for more pressure on pollution
23rd June 2007, 6:30 WST
China’s emergence as the world’s biggest polluter will intensify the pressure it feels from the rest of the world to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, climate campaigner Al Gore says.
Figures released this week showed that China might already have overtaken the US as the biggest emitter of the main gas, carbon dioxide.
“I think that when China is recognised as the largest emitter — it may have happened this week or it may happen next year — it will produce a subtle but significant change in the pressure China feels from the rest of the world to be part of a solution to this crisis,” he said. “But in order to apply that moral pressure, the United States has to join the world’s efforts to solve the crisis. That is why I am spending so much time spending every effort to reach a political critical mass to solve the climate crisis.”
Mr Gore was in London on Wednesday to promote his Live Earth 24-hour concert next month estimated to reach two billion people in every continent, which has been criticised by stars including Roger Daltry and Bob Geldof.
Declining to criticise Geldof, whose advice he claimed to have taken, Mr Gore said it was a “wake up call” that would deliver “powerful messages about the climate crisis” and be “the beginning of a multi-year campaign”.
It will have simple messages like the slogans at the end of his film, An Inconvenient Truth — change lightbulbs, don’t waste water, don’t leave things on standby, drive a more efficient car.
“It will be something people enjoy enormously but it will also send out powerful messages,” he said.
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So I wonder if the Live Earth concert in Shanghai will concentrate on the moral imperative China has in not building two coal fired plants a week and in cleaning up the pollution of 95% of its rivers? China unfortunately is in a precarious position... the country is feeling the affects of the climate crisis very severely in the North with drought, and in the South with floods. They have suffered economically as crops have failed and millions go without water with what is left too toxic to use. Add to that the
glaciers in the Himalayas that are melting faster than predicted</a> along with desertification, and you have a recipe for ecological catastrophe. However, their country claims the pollution is as bad as it is because they are now the main supplier of goods to the United States. Their penchant for economic growth is now tipping the scales ecologically which poses a great moral dilemma. However, how much of what they state about the pollution being caused because of their trade with the U.S. is actually correct? Would pollution be less in China if we did not outsource millions of jobs to their country?
And now that it is or soon to be the country emitting the most in GHGs, how would the U.S. choose to move them to greater moral responsibility? By pulling our business from them and thus catapulting our economy into a freefall as they sell off all of the paper they own? Amazing the interweaving of this situation in that even with the world heading for a tipping point it is greed that takes precedence. This then surely must be a moral reckoning of biblical proportions if we are to see any progress whatsoever regarding balancing economic growth with the insatiable desire to be "number one."
Renewable investments that showcase moral responsibility with ethical business practices while concentrating on growth markets are essential now not only for the U.S. but China as well. I surely hope they begin to see the light and feel that pressure on a global scale as Mr. Gore seems to think will happen and soon. Of course, that can only come about if those who need to put that pressure on them have that moral awakening as well. The U.S. will look hypocritical putting pressure on any other country when we can't even get our own people to see the urgency of this crisis and lift it out of the partisan political framework it is in now.
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