OPINION> Commentary
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OPINION> Commentary
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Energy key to human progress
By Michael Economides (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-18 07:33
I hope that sanity will prevail and China will resist the calls by rabid environmentalists to embark into a self-defeating and hugely expensive emissions control. In the process, China, if it continues to resist, may prove to be the world's salvation from the sanctimonious sociopolitical movement of ideological environmentalism. It is always hard to oppose a movement, often in the guise of a religion, that claims it has most of the answers on how life should be. It is harder to deal with one that actually claims that life itself is at stake. Modern environmentalism in the developed world has taken that hue and while it has often preached how people should live their lives, what they eat and how they dress, the last few years they raised the boogeyman of global warming, the result of most sources of energy so vital to modern living. "Global climate change" has become more convenient for zealots because one can blame all temperature ups and downs and all calamities on the same source, man-made carbon dioxide, CO2. This is often without regard to the connection between energy consumption and economic growth. While they often talk about profligacy and waste of energy by developed and developing countries they omit the even more important corollary: energy consumption generates wealth and well being.. China also needs to be aware that many of the same ideologues and Hollywood misfits in search of a cause that have recently criticized the country on Tibet, the Olympics and even claimed that divine intervention punished the country for the recent earthquakes (how disgusting) are also the champions of global warming rhetoric. It must be nice to live in multi-million dollar mansions, driving Ferraris and flying private jets and preach to others on how to live their lives and how to develop their economy.
None of this is to say the world should ignore pollution. Pollution, especially airborne particulates from the combustion of coal, is a real but tractable problem. China with its breakneck economic development has had its share of this. They know it and they also know they have to fix the problem and they are taking the necessary steps. The real issue is the noise about anthropogenic global climate change because of emissions of CO2. "The science is all in" - not just for proof that global warming is happening, but also in support of the notion that "almost all of it" is anthropogenic. "Scientific consensus" is frequently cited to leave no doubt over the fact of global warming, or its causes, or its potential future effects. Scientists questioning or with doubts over those issues are negatively portrayed in the popular press as "skeptics" and "deniers". There are many of those and they are poised to carry the argument. We will not discuss here whether observed global warming is an outlier from past records, nor whether a fraction or all of it is anthropogenic. Others have done so, often causing considerable acrimony, and much more will be forthcoming because of the socio-political implications (both domestic and international) that will certainly intensify. There will be decisive public reaction once the issue goes beyond the rhetoric and becomes associated with the price tag that accompanies legislation. An undeniable element is that much of the international discussion on anthropogenic global warming is a thinly veiled criticism of the United States and now China, their lifestyle, and the ancillary use of energy resources. What becomes even more unsettling are the postulated future effects of global warming. A review of the "scientific" literature shows a wide array of claims, many markedly contradictory, published by scientists that many of them already espouse the basic premises of global warming. Will global warming cause more or fewer hurricanes, will sea levels rise by several meters or a few millimeters? The answers to these questions are not trivial. But what is at issue is that while alarmism pays in printing more books and articles in the world press and even Hollywood movies, there are no real alternatives to fossil fuels, oil, natural gas and coal in the foreseeable future. We will be a hydrocarbon-dependent world for several more decades and all other claims are either wrong or disingenuous. We better figure out two far more important issues: how to find more oil and gas supply without embarking into more wars and international acrimony and how to control real pollution such as particulates and nitrogen and sulfur oxides which really harm the environment and the atmosphere. But the need for economic growth should not be negotiable and that should be made abundantly clear. The author is editor-in-chief of Energy Tribune (China Daily 07/18/2008 page9) |
