Chinese walker

In early February, the results of a national pollution survey released by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) showed that the country`s pollution problems were much worse than previously estimated. The international media appeared to accept the ministry`s explanation for the discrepancy in its figures – agricultural sources of pollution had not previously been included. But such reports overlooked a more crucial factor: over the last two years the MEP has made no real headway in tackling pollution. It has merely made some feints and declared a paper victory.

On November 2 last year, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the minister for environmental protection, Zhou Shengxian, had claimed that China had “stopped water pollution worsening” and seen slight improvements in all areas over the previous year, during a speech at the 13th World Lake Conference, held in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

This conclusion does not match the facts. On November 11, the People`s Daily reported that, in spite of a six year investment programme, which saw 91 billion yuan (US$13.3 billion) spent on efforts to improve China`s three most polluted rivers and lakes, water quality remains poor. As the development of the Yangtze Delta has charged ahead, for example, the standard of water in Lake Taihu, eastern China, has fallen by three grades – from grade two in the 1980s to grade five or worse now. The many textile-dying, chemical- and food-processing plants around the lake have caused a major accumulation of pollutants. Lake Chao, in eastern China, and Lake Dian, in the south-west, have both shrunk and become more polluted as a result of aquaculture, reclamation of land for agriculture and the building of factories.

The MEP is also aware that, over the past year, there have been 12 incidents of heavy metal and metalloid pollution in Fengxiang in central China, Wugang in south China and Dongchuan, a district of the south-western city of Kunming. These cases left 4,035 people with excessive levels of lead in their blood and 182 with excessive levels of cadmium and gave rise to 32 “mass incidents”, or public protests.

The MEP`s national pollution survey itself undermines the department`s official statements. And even without that data, the Chinese public can see, smell and taste that water quality is still falling and that the environment as a whole is worsening. So why does the ministry insist that water quality is improving? Vice-minister of environmental protection, Zhang Lijun, explains that levels of sulphur dioxide and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) – a measure that helps determine the amount of organic pollutants in surface water – both fell in 2008 and 2009. This is the basis for the MEP`s claim.

But there are many different indicators of water quality. Measuring just two of these is clearly inadequate and can lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn – as the MEP has shown. It is as if the ministry is a doctor who has declared a patient suffering from a brain tumour healthy on grounds of normal blood pressure.

As the highest of China`s environmental protection agencies, the MEP must be aware that it is impossible to get a full picture of water quality by measuring just two factors. Nor can it be ignorant of the reality of China`s deteriorating rivers and lakes – given the national pollution survey has been underway for two years, the ministry must be familiar with the actual situation. But three months before the survey results were released, it was still saying that China had “stopped water pollution worsening”.

Why would the MEP do this? A quick look at its record over the past two years provides an answer: it was in dire need of an achievement.

Two years ago, the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) was upgraded to ministry status and its powers expanded. But the department`s actions since then have been disappointing. As a mere agency, SEPA may have been weak, but it still managed to cause a stir. It launched crackdown after crackdown – known as “environmental storms” – against companies that broke regulations, including the largest of hydropower firms. It enforced regional planning restrictions, refusing to approve projects for law-breaking local governments until changes were made. It called a halt to illegal works at Beijing`s Old Summer Palace and held an unprecedented public hearing, which became a model for public participation and democratic decision-making.

New legal documents, the “Temporary Measures for Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessments” and “Regulations on Publication of Environmental Information”, were drafted to ensure the public`s right to environmental information and participation. Research on environmental planning law was conducted and the concept of Green GDP explored as a way of tackling China`s worship of unbridled growth – which lies at the heart of China`s environmental deterioration.

All of these were significant victories, achieved by a weak government agency fighting real battles against powerful interest groups and building systems for better long-term governance. In 2007, I wrote that SEPA was little more than an unarmed weakling, yet it had already fought long and hard for the environment. Its bravery was recognised – but its weakness was also clear. It was not an independent ministry under the State Council, China`s highest organ of government, and it struggled to participate in policymaking and to coordinate with other departments. It lacked executive powers and capacity. So I and many others said: “If we expect this organisation to deal with the huge issues it faces, we must change the systems and legislation that surround it, and grant them increased power.”

Two years ago, the agency finally became a ministry and won greater powers. It was no longer a dwarf, but a full-grown man. But, disappointingly, it has achieved little of note since then. New regulations on public participation in environmental impact assessments and the publication of environmental information have been implemented, but this work started before ministry status was awarded and work was only needed on the final stages. And new laws governing environmental evaluations have so far failed to resolve any issues of public concern over major construction projects.

Moreover, the “environmental storms” have stopped blowing, with the exception of last year`s decision to halt two illegal hydropower projects on the Jinsha River, south-west China. Even then, the MEP only rushed to put a stop to them after State Council leaders started to take a look at the issue of illegal projects in the area. Prior to that, the ministry had quietly approved a different dam. True, sulphur dioxide and COD levels have fallen somewhat. But how much was this the result of reduced industrial production during the economic crisis? Moreover, “green GDP” was left by the wayside, after repeated cries of “not ready yet”.

After all this, the MEP needed a success to show to its superiors and the nation. So “worsening water pollution” was – on paper – stopped. To be fair, the national pollution survey is a big step forward. It has provided relatively accurate data and proved that the ministry`s own “achievements” are not all they may seem.

A few days ago an American reporter asked me whether or not China was really committed to environmentally friendly development. Like her, many foreigners are confused. The idea of building an “ecological civilisation” was included in the report of the 17th Party Congress and China`s leaders are calling for the development of a low-carbon economy and emissions-reduction measures to combat climate change. These are all solemn undertakings. But environmental damage continues to worsen, and not only do the environmental authorities do nothing – they claim false victories.

This does not look like environmentally friendly development. I could not answer the reporter`s question, just like I cannot explain the ministry`s failings over the last two years. If I had to reply, I could only say that I believe that China`s leaders have made the decision to go down a green path, but local government and environmental authorities have not yet taken this seriously.

Liu Jianqiang is editor in chinadialogue`s Beijing office.

Homepage photo of Taihu Lake by Greenpeace

China is poised to present the world with some of its greatest opportunities – as well as some of its greatest challenges – in the years ahead. The planet`s most populous country is now home to 1.3 billion people. It is also home to a rapidly developing economy that is fast becoming a major global player. The spectacular rise of China has lifted millions out of poverty. It has also alarmed many of its neighbours and competitors and prompted the question, “Is China a threat or an opportunity?” Its rapid development has come at a heavy environmental cost.

The Chinese government acknowledges China`s environmental crisis. In a 2005 interview, Pan Yue, vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the government agency with responsibility for the environment, said: “This [economic] miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace%26hellip;Acid rain is falling on one-third of our territory, half of the water in China`s seven largest rivers is completely useless; a quarter of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water; a third of the urban population is breathing polluted air; less than a fifth of the rubbish in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner.”

China`s need for energy and water to feed continuing urbanisation and industrialisation will only exacerbate this crisis if solutions are not found. However, the country`s environmental problems are of concern not only to China; they affect everybody in the world, directly and indirectly. As China expands its search for energy and minerals, timber and other raw materials across the world, the environmental impact becomes a global issue. According to the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, China used 26% of the world`s crude steel in 2005, 32% of the rice, 37% of the cotton and 47% of the cement. While some of those materials are going into exported products, a good deal is going into building a Chinese infrastructure that is transforming the country`s landscape. And as China`s carbon emissions rise, the common problem of global climate change is affected.

Since the late 1970s, the country has moved from a centrally planned system to a more market-oriented one, with a burgeoning private sector. China`s economic restructuring, with its accompanying gains in efficiency, have led to a huge leap – more than tenfold — in gross domestic product (GDP) since 1978. Measured in purchasing power, then, China has become the second-largest economy in the world, after the United States. In per-capita terms, however, it is still lower middle-income, with large income disparities between regions and 150 million people falling below international poverty lines. The Chinese government has struggled to cope with both the consequences of past environmental policies and the challenges of the current economic transformation. With China`s growing national wealth, its rapid urbanisation and its economic weight in the world comes new responsibility regarding a tidal wave of environmental issues – issues of environmental protection, conservation of resources, power-generating capacity, fossil-fuel use and much more, which need to be urgently addressed.

Today, environmental issues are confronting every country in the world, large and small, powerful and weak. For China, with its huge population, colossal energy needs, growth in consumerism, expanding industrialisation and, soon, the 2008 Summer Olympic Games taking place in its capital, Beijing, the demands on its environment will be staggering. How will the country cope? And how will China work to ensure that it does no harm to places — and resources — outside its national borders?

Along with having the second-largest economy on the planet, China is the world`s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO%26sup2;), one of the major greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Although China has ratified both the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol, as a developing country it is not legally bound to any emissions-limiting or emissions-reduction targets. Nor, notes the UN Environment Programme`s Global Environment Outlook 2006, have any targets been set under the 2005 Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which encompasses China and two of its regional, developing neighbours – India and South Korea – along with the US, Japan and Australia. (India and Japan are the fourth and fifth largest CO%26sup2; emitters, with Russia in third place.) The partnership, however, aims to develop and utilise emerging cleaner technologies and practices, including renewable energy systems.

In 1990, according to UNEP figures, the Asia-Pacific region produced 435 million tonnes (8%) more CO%26sup2; than did North America. By 2002, the disparity was 2.6 million tonnes (41% more). Figures cited by the Worldwatch Institute show China emitting one billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, or 14% of the world total (still only one-seventh of the level of the US, the world`s largest emitter). Pressure on China to limit its greenhouse-gas emissions, post-Kyoto, is mounting, both internationally and internally. The Chinese government is well aware that China is vulnerable, on many fronts, to the effects of climate change: rising sea levels, violent weather fluctuations, desertification, loss of habitat and biodiversity, health issues, and more.

San Francisco-based Pacific Environment, one of the organisations supporting China`s emerging environmental movement, says that “China`s contribution to global warming will impact the environment of every nation on earth.” Indeed, it adds, the country`s management of its environmental problems will have significant global repercussions. “The inability of China`s farmers to eke out a crop from drying land will force it to turn to the world food market, further intensifying the stresses on land in grain-producing countries like the US and Canada. And China`s consumption of over a third of the global fish harvest, a number that is certain to grow, is placing severe strain on our already overtaxed oceans. Simply put, anyone concerned about the global environment must be concerned about the capacity of China`s people to deal with the pressing threats they face.”

Twenty-five years ago, Chinese city streets were crowded with people on bicycles, and there were few private cars. China still has approximately 500 million cyclists, the bicycle remaining the primary mode of transportation for many of the country`s poorest people. But bicycle production has been declining for the past decade, as the country becomes more affluent, and the majority of the bikes produced in China today are exported.

China cancelled bicycle-registration requirements in 2004, China Daily reported, “signalling the beginning of the end of its status as the world`s %26lsquo;bicycle kingdom` as an emerging middle class increasingly forgoes the clean and energy-efficient transport in favour of the car.” In cities such as Beijing, the bicycle is no longer viewed as a “transportation tool”. Cars and bikes compete for road space, and the capital`s wide boulevards, overpasses and ring roads reflect China`s new transportation priority. Each day, it is said, about 1,000 new cars take to the streets of Beijing.

By 2000, there were five million cars on the roads and the number is expected to keep growing by 10 to 20% or more annually over the next several years. While more disruptive road building and more air pollution come with the additional motor vehicles, car ownership is an aspiration of an increasing number of Chinese people – and the government views the development of a motor industry as an important facet of the country`s economic development. (Still, as part of a weeklong energy-saving campaign in June 2006, the State Council, China`s cabinet, urged civil servants to leave their cars at home and either walk or take public transportation to their offices.)

%26copy; Lovell

Since 2003, China has been considered the fourth-largest producer and the third-largest consumer of automobiles, and cars have surpassed industrial dust as the greatest urban polluter (representing an estimated 80% of urban air pollution in 2005). A consumer study in China found that most people consider knowing how to drive a car — along with speaking English and using a computer – to be one of three basic, necessary skills in modern society.

As a result of the growing popularity of – and pollution by — cars in China, the government promulgated new vehicle-emissions standards in 2004, in order to force polluters off the road. The new standards, equivalent to the so-called Euro II regulations, require a 30.4% cut in carbon monoxide and a 55.8% reduction in hydrocarbon and nitric oxide emissions in China. Low-quality petrol, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), contributes to vehicular air pollution in China. It contains three to eight times more sulphur than does gasoline used in Europe and the United States.

According to SEPA, which issued five new national emissions standards for a range of vehicle types in 2005, “exhaust gas and noise emitted by vehicles have brought extensive concern from society”. It added that the “automobile manufacturing technology level in China is not good enough” at present, and that “low, even zero, emission vehicles will be the future development direction of China`s auto industry.” Even-higher emissions standards – equivalent to Euro III regulations – are expected to be adopted nationwide in 2008, with tougher regulations to be considered further in the future.

Along with road traffic, China`s railways also have been booming. The last stretch of the world`s highest railway, the nearly 2,000-km-long Qinghai-Tibet line, linking China`s Qinghai province with the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, opened on 1 July, 2006. President Hu Jintao declared it “not only a magnificent feat in China`s history of railway construction, but a great miracle of the world`s railroad history”. The Chinese consider the line an engineering marvel in having overcome the perennial ice and slush along the route, which many felt was too fragile to support tracks and trains. Projections indicate the railway will help double tourism revenues by 2010 and cut transport costs for goods by 75% in Tibet. Environmentalists remain concerned about the frail ecosystem on the Tibetan Plateau, which is home to numerous unique animal species, and have called for conservation measures.

Generally, rail mileage and traffic have increased rapidly, though not as fast as economic development currently demands. The rail industry, market researchers say, is an important part of China`s comprehensive transportation system. Its prospects are considered bright and likely to attract considerable financial investment in the years ahead.

The country has nearly 75,000 rail-kilometres (and more than 5,600 stations), according to 2004 statistics, and there were over 1.2 billion passenger-journeys on the lines. China`s Ministry of Railways said in July 2006 that the country`s trains had made 620 million passenger journeys in the first half of the year – up over 8% from the same period in 2005 — and carried 1.39 billion tons of goods, including greater amounts of economically critical coal and petroleum, as well as chemical fertilisers and pesticides – an annual increase of more than 6%. The country`s lines handle a quarter of global rail traffic on just 6% of the world`s tracks.

Chinese citizens are increasingly taking to the skies, too, travelling for business or pleasure, both within China and abroad. “For the first time in history,” The New York Times reported in May 2006, “large numbers of Chinese are leaving their country as tourists %26hellip; In 1995, only 4.5 million Chinese travelled overseas. By 2005, that figure had increased to 31 million, and if expectations for future growth are met or approached, even that gargantuan growth will be quickly dwarfed. Chinese and international travel industry experts forecast that at least 50 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas by 2010, and 100 million by 2020.”

Coupled with travel by the Chinese, of course, is travel to (and around) the county by visitors from abroad. The 2008 Olympic Games, to be hosted by Beijing, are expected to bring an additional 2.6 million Chinese to the capital during, before and after the games, plus an estimated 500,000 overseas tourists and spectators, according to the Beijing Tourism Administration. Citing figures from the National Bureau of Statistics and the China National Tourism Administration, the Xinhua news agency reported in 2005 that the number of inbound foreign tourists to the Chinese mainland in 2004 had reached nearly 110 million. They came, mainly, from 16 countries and brought around $25 billion into China`s foreign exchange coffers. And – like air travel all over the world — the planes they flew in on contributed to the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry`s voice, air transport is responsible for 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while supporting 8% of global economic activity. Over the last 30 years, the organisation says, aircraft emissions are down by 70%, due to fuel efficiency, new technology and direct routings. IATA and China reached agreement in early 2006 on a new route for international traffic – north of the Himalayas — which is designed to reduce flight times between China and Europe by an average of 30 minutes.

China has a shortage of international air routes, says IATA, because only 30% of the country`s airspace is available for civilian aviation and flight-planning policy is restrictive. Air-traffic delays have resulted in the “golden triangle” bounded by Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

IATA contends that the new route, known as IATA-1 (officially, Y-1), will have a “significant impact” on the environment, resulting in the annual reduction of 2,860 hours of flight time, 27,000 tonnes of fuel consumption, 84,800 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emission and 240,000 kilograms of nitrogen oxides emissions. It also will mean US $30 million in savings on airline fuel bills “at a time where the airline industry is bleeding red ink from the record high price of oil,” said IATA`s director general, Giovanni Bisignani, in April.

As airline fuel costs rise, domestic airlines too have initiated new fuel-saving measures. (Fuel costs represent 25 to 28% of the general operational costs of an airline in China, according to China Daily.) China Southern, which operates the most extensive air network in the country, for example, has applied to the authorities for more direct — and higher — flight routes designed to save fuel.

Along with such measures, however, China also plans to build 48 new airports over the next five years, bringing the national total to 190. The country`s largest international hubs – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – are already being expanded, and China has promised to buy hundreds of new planes by 2010. With the new ground facilities, reports the British newspaper the Guardian, “the country`s 1.3 billion people will be served by fewer than 200 airports, compared with more than 10,000 in the US, which has a quarter of the population.”

Environmentalists are worried by the expected boom in air traffic over the next several years, fearing increased depletion of the earth`s protective ozone layer (as well unsafe skies). Campaigners have targeted the world`s air travel as a serious contributor to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions — despite carbon-trading schemes such as Europe`s which are designed to reduce those emissions. At higher altitudes, contrails – the vapour trails, or artificial cirrus clouds, formed by condensation from aircraft engines or wing-tip vortices – also have an overall warming effect due to changes in radiation balance known as radiative forcing.

Despite the growth in cars, trains and planes, will China say goodbye to its non-polluting two-wheelers? Not according to a spokesman for the Beijing Traffic Administration Bureau, who told the China Social News in 2004: “The improvement in the state economy, the traffic situation and city management does not mean that Chinese are saying a final and complete farewell to the bicycle. Some people will still choose this non-polluting, small and green transport tool.”

%26copy; Lovell

And, according to the Worldwatch Institute, “one of the brightest signs on the bicycle landscape is the growth in output of electric bicycles, which have electric motors to make pedalling easier.” Their rapid rise is fuelled by Chinese sales: roughly one of every six bicycles bought in China in 2005 was an electric model – and China accounted for 95% of the 10.5 million electric-bike sales in that year.

Homepage photo %26copy; Milton Menefee

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based freelance journalist with a special interest in environmental and human-rights issues. A writer and editor, she was previously a staff member at Time magazine (Europe), The Independent, the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.

Nuclear power: is it a force for good or for evil? Put bluntly, that is the essence of the argument that has preoccupied much of the world for the last 60 years.

To its backers, generating electricity by splitting atoms of uranium is a cheap, clean, safe and secure solution to humanity’s energy needs. To its detractors, however, nuclear power is a costly, dirty, dangerous and destabilising distraction.

Like all crucial and complex issues, there are inevitably truths – and half-truths – on both sides of the argument. As the world stands on the brink of a major expansion of nuclear power, it has rarely been more important to understand the opportunities and the threats posed by one of the planet’s most controversial technologies.

Nuclear power was ushered onto the world stage in August 1945, when the United States (US) dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people. After that, there could be no doubting that nuclear fission was capable of releasing huge amounts of energy. The only question was whether it could be tamed.

It didn’t take scientists long to figure out a way of using atoms for peace, instead of war. They controlled fission so that it produced a sustained chain reaction capable of generating enough heat to raise steam and turn turbines. In October 1956, the United Kingdom (UK) opened what was billed as the world’s first civil nuclear power station at Calder Hall in north west England. As well as producing electricity, the station also produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Since then, nuclear power has expanded across the globe. According to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are now 442 nuclear power plants in operation in 30 countries. Five countries have more than 20 plants, including the US (103), France (59), Japan (55), Russia (31) and the UK (23).

The country with the highest proportion of nuclear electricity is France with 78.5%, followed by Lithuania (69.6%), Slovakia (56.1%) and Belgium (55.6%). According to the IAEA, China has ten nuclear plants in operation and another four under construction in Guangdong and Zhejiang, providing two per cent of the country’s electricity.

About three quarters of the world’s nuclear plants were built before the accident which ripped apart reactor number four at Chernobyl in Ukraine on 26 April 1986, showering Europe with radioactivity. Since then, reactor building in many western countries has stagnated, though plants have gone ahead in Japan, Korea, India and China.

Now, however, some countries are intent on reviving nuclear power, with the US, Canada, Russia, France and the UK all contemplating new stations.India, China, Turkey and even Iran are looking to work on or to expand their presently small programmes. China, for example, has recently announced its intention to build 40 new nuclear plants and a leading official from the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense has even declared that “Nuclear power will become the pillar of energy supply in coastal areas of east China.” Other countries, though, like Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy are trying to reduce their dependence on nuclear electricity. The Swedish government has even said that its goal is to phase out nuclear power – which currently provides about half of the country’s electricity – and at the same time to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels.

Bradwell nuclear power station in Essex, UK (currently being decommissioned)

%26copy; Rob Welham

Perhaps the key factor in putting nuclear power back on the agenda in the West is the looming threat of global warming, partly caused by pollution from burning coal and oil. Nuclear companies have promoted reactors as a “green” source of energy because they do not emit carbon dioxide, one of the pollutants blamed for disrupting the climate.

Environmentalists, however, point out that the energy used to mine uranium fuel for reactors will generate carbon emissions. Furthermore, they say that such emissions will increase because lower grades of uranium ore will need to be exploited to fuel a global nuclear expansion, though such claims are hard to quantify.

The nuclear industry has also argued that modern reactor designs are much safer than Chernobyl, with more inbuilt fail-safe systems aimed at minimising the risk of radioactive leaks. Even in the worst circumstances, the industry says, casualties would be low.

This is disputed by the anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, who accuse the industry of a concerted attempt to downplay the risks and consequences of accidents. Any additional radioactivity released into the environment can trigger cancers, they say.

These arguments came to a head in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident in 2006. A report by the IAEA, which promotes nuclear power, suggested that the radiation released by the accident would cause 4,000 cancer deaths. But this claim was undermined by other scientific reports which estimated that the death toll would be at least four times higher.

Even without the risk of nuclear accidents, environmentalists argue that nuclear power has show-stopping drawbacks. Reactors inevitably produce radioactive waste which remains potentially lethal for hundreds of thousands of years, posing a uniquely difficult disposal problem.

With the exception of some radioactive military debris in the US, no nuclear waste has yet been disposed of successfully. One of the key problems is that many people do not want to live next to a nuclear waste dump, although it is also impossible to ensure that there won’t be leaks over the longer term. Several countries are, nevertheless, investigating potential sites where waste could be buried deep underground. Sweden probably leads the world in research and development of such facilities, but these are unlikely to come on line for at least another twenty years and are difficult to build; one of the reasons why the government there has decided to phase out nuclear power in future.

The industry, on the other hand, points out that even if leaks occur thousands of years hence, their consequences wouldn’t be disastrous since much of the radioactivity would have decayed away. The volumes of the most dangerous high-level wastes are also relatively small.

The waste problem also has an important bearing on the cost of nuclear power – another hotly disputed topic. Critics point out that decommissioning nuclear reactors and associated plants, and disposing of the waste, is a messy and expensive business because so many of the materials become radioactive.

So far, they argue, the true cost of the clean-up hasn’t been included in the price of producing nuclear electricity because governments and taxpayers have been saddled with the bills, which can be massive. In the UK, the cost of decommissioning the first generation of nuclear plants has been officially estimated at over %26pound;50 billion (approx US$100bn), and has led to the bail out of nuclear companies seeking to avoid bankruptcy.

Nuclear advocates, however, say that the industry has learnt from past mistakes, and will include the cost of decommissioning and waste disposal in the price of future plants. With new designs, they say, nuclear power will earn enough income to cover all its costs, and more.

Not only that, the advocates argue, nuclear power is essential in any serious global effort to combat climate change. “The security of our world requires a massive transformation to clean energy,” says the World Nuclear Association, which represents the industry. “Renewables like solar, wind and biomass can help. But only nuclear power offers clean, environmentally friendly energy on a massive scale.”

This is countered by environmental groups, who argue that increased energy efficiency combined with the development of solar, wind, wave, tidal and biomass energy sources would be a far more effective and reliable way of cutting climate-wrecking emissions. They also back emerging clean coal technologies which promise to capture and store carbon instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, warns that nuclear power can’t provide a quick fix for climate change. “There’s little point in denying that nuclear power has benefits, but in our view these are outweighed by serious disadvantages,” he says.

The biggest disadvantage, some say, is the continuing link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Although the civil industry has tried to disentangle itself from the military technology from which it was born, strong ties still persist in many countries.

Uranium is often enriched, increasing the proportion of the uranium-235 isotope by a few per cent, to improve its efficiency as a reactor fuel. Unfortunately the same technology can also be used to enrich uranium to 90% and over, making it usable in the kind of bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

Similarly, spent fuel from reactors is reprocessed to extract plutonium for use as reactor fuel, though it can also be used to make a bomb like that dropped on Nagasaki. Apart from a few grams in the Gabon desert, plutonium didn’t exist until it was created by burning uranium in a nuclear reactor.

The IAEA, backed by some governments, argues that it should be possible to separate the civil and military nuclear fuel cycles. It has proposed the establishment of a series of international centres for enrichment and reprocessing that would provide nuclear fuel services to developing countries, without giving them access to technologies that could easily be adapted for military use.

To critics, however, such a system would enshrine the fundamental apartheid at the heart of the world’s failing attempts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Those countries that already have civil and military nuclear technology get to keep them, while everyone else has to buy in their services. Whether that is a sustainable, workable or just way of conducting international affairs, history will judge.

The Author: Rob Edwards is the environment editor of the Sunday Herald and a correspondent for New Scientist. His blog is here.

Homepage photo by Adam Lederer

Homepage photo caption: Looking down the stairs to the entrance of the Chernobyl Museum. Each sign represents a town that no longer exists due to the disaster.

Isabel Hilton: You`re now a filmmaker, you live in China — tell me about your background.

John D. Liu: I went to China first in 1979. I was 27. I`m half Chinese and my father had been telling me since [then United States president Richard] Nixon`s visit in 1972 that I had to go to China to help China develop. I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and was living in Bloomington, Indiana, in the US. I didn`t want to go to China. It was an interesting time: I was young and America was an interesting place.

I had been to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, but China didn`t seem very interesting. It had a communist government and when I looked across the border from Hong Kong when I was 13, I saw a man pointing a machine gun at me. China to me at that time meant [the philosopher] Lao Tzu and Taoism and Tang literature. Contemporary China didn`t resonate. Then, in the late 1970s, my father said, “You must go because your grandmother is going to die.” What could I say?

So I went to China and I realised he was right: it was much more interesting for me to film in China than in the US. So I did a semester of language training and I went to work for [the American television network] CBS as a producer-cameraman. I worked for them for 10 years.

IH: How did you get from there to the environment?

JL: I was so exhausted after the collapse of the Soviet Union that journalism had lost its appeal and I wanted to make films instead news reports, so I went to work for Italian state TV, where I made one-hour documentaries, then for German TV for three years. By then it was the mid-1990s and the environment had been deteriorating. China was changing from a fearful place, just out of the Cultural Revolution, to a market economy. There was a flowering of creativity and greater social freedom. Although 1989 punctuated it somewhat, even that was book-ended by decades of peace and prosperity.

During this amazing period of reform, opening and economic progress, there was so much pollution. Finally it struck me: I live in Beijing, my children were born here, and we were all suffering. It was clear to me that I had both the right and the responsibility to do something.

Most of the Chinese seemed detached, as though it wasn`t their responsibility. I think they thought the government was responsible and they had been conditioned to believe that they didn`t have either the right or the responsibility [to act]. Some people thought, “I`m just one person; there`s nothing I can do.” Others thought, “It`s nothing to do with me; it`s [the role of] somebody else.”

And in a way, that was my attitude. I used to think somebody ought to do something about the environment but what I meant was, “Somebody else ought to do something about the environment.” I was too important and busy. But after a while I realised that this was the same attitude that was part of the problem. So we began the Environmental Education Media Project, to take existing films on the environment to China and to translate them into Chinese.

We started working with the Television Trust for the Environment, and we brought over [Britain`s] Channel 4 and BBC`s excellent documentaries, on pest management and water wars. Finally we took hundreds of films. Then we wanted to make films and needed research, but there was no research facility.

So we said to SEPA [China`s State Environmental Protection Administration] that we wanted to build a reference and research facility. They have a huge US $70 million building built by Japanese foreign assistance, called the Japan-China Friendship Environmental Protection Centre, on the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing. They opened up the cupboard where cleaning ladies were storing their mops. We said this wouldn`t do. Finally they took us up to the seventh floor and opened a door marked “Library” – it turned out to be a huge room, 750 square meters — that had been empty for three years.

So we began to build a library. Now it`s the largest concentration of environmental information in China — the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Centre. It`s on the web. [American environmentalist] Amory Lovins has spoken there – so many people have been through there now.

Then we started making films, researching water, wetlands, grasslands, migration and so on. Then we found HIV was a huge problem in China and there wasn`t much information about it. So we helped the Chinese Centre for Disease Control to create the China HIV/Aids Information Network (CHAIN).

Global meat consumption is predicted to double by 2020. Much of this increase will come from China, where the growing middle class is demanding more meat and other animal products. As a result, China is now rushing helter-skelter down the path blazed by giant agribusiness corporations in western nations. Once, the animals we raised went out and gathered things we could not or would not eat. Cows ate grass, chickens pecked at worms or seeds. Then we ate their flesh, or their eggs, or drank their milk, thus adding to the amount of food available to us.

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city%26mdash;an indication of whether the city is designed for people or for cars.

The world`s cities are in trouble. In Mexico City, Tehran, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the quality of daily life is deteriorating. Breathing the air in some cities is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend going nowhere sitting in traffic-congested streets and highways climbs higher each year, raising frustration levels.

Pollution in Shanghai, photo by wjpbennett

In response to these conditions, we are seeing the emergence of a new urbanism. One of the most remarkable modern urban transformations has occurred in Bogot%26aacute;, Colombia, where Enrique Pe%26ntilde;alosa served as Mayor for three years, beginning in 1998. When he took office he did not ask how life could be improved for the 30 percent who owned cars; he wanted to know what could be done for the 70 percent%26mdash;the majority%26mdash;who did not own cars.

Pe%26ntilde;alosa realized that a city that is a pleasant environment for children and the elderly would work for everyone. In just a few years, he transformed the quality of urban life with his vision of a city designed for people. Under his leadership, the city banned the parking of cars on sidewalks, created or renovated 1,200 parks, introduced a highly successful bus-based rapid transit system, built hundreds of kilometres of bicycle paths and pedestrian streets, reduced rush hour traffic by 40 percent, planted 100,000 trees, and involved local citizens directly in the improvement of their neighbourhoods. In doing this, he created a sense of civic pride among the city`s 8 million residents, making the streets of Bogot%26aacute; in this strife-torn country safer than those in Washington, D.C.

Enrique Pe%26ntilde;alosa observes that “high quality public pedestrian space in general and parks in particular are evidence of a true democracy at work.” He further observes: “Parks and public space are also important to a democratic society because they are the only places where people meet as equals.%26hellip;In a city, parks are as essential to the physical and emotional health of a city as the water supply.” He notes this is not obvious from most city budgets, where parks are deemed a luxury. By contrast, “roads, the public space for cars, receive infinitely more resources and less budget cuts than parks, the public space for children. Why,” he asks, “are the public spaces for cars deemed more important than the public spaces for children?”

In espousing this new urban philosophy, Pe%26ntilde;alosa is not alone. The reform he initiated in Bogot%26aacute; is being carried on by his successor, Antanas Mockus. Now government planners everywhere are experimenting, seeking ways to design cities for people not cars. Cars promise mobility, and they provide it in a largely rural setting. But in an urbanizing world there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility.

Some cities in industrial and developing countries alike are dramatically increasing urban mobility by moving away from the car. Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, was one of the first to design and adopt an alternative transportation system, one that does not mimic those in the West but that is inexpensive and commuter-friendly. Since 1974 Curitiba`s transportation system has been totally restructured. Although one third of the people own cars, these play a minor role in urban transport. Busing, biking, and walking totally dominate, with two thirds of all trips in the city by bus. The city`s population has doubled since 1974, but its car traffic has declined by a remarkable 30 percent.

Aside from the growth of population itself, urbanisation is the dominant demographic trend of our time. In 1900, 150 million people lived in cities. By 2000, it was 2.9 billion people, a 19-fold increase. By 2007 more than half of us will live in cities%26mdash;making us, for the first time, an urban species.

In 1900 there were only a handful of cities with a million people. Today 408 cities have at least that many inhabitants. And there are 20 megacities with 10 million or more residents. Tokyo`s population of 35 million exceeds that of Canada. Mexico City`s population of 19 million is nearly equal to that of Australia. New York, S%26atilde;o Paulo, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai follow close behind.

The Author: Lester R. Brown is an internationally renowned environmentalist and author of numerous books, including the recently-released “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble,” in which the above extract first appears. It is reproduced here with the permission of the Earth Policy Institute where Lester remains as the Founding President.

Homepage photo: Cycle lanes in Bogota, photo by Adriana Henriquez

The world faces an enormous challenge to produce the energy we need without damaging the lives of our children and grandchildren. Capturing the carbon dioxide produced from combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas before it gets into the atmosphere and placing it instead in secure storage deep underground is a key to meeting our responsibilities. Welcome to the world of Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS.

Carbon dioxide can be captured from all types of modern power plants, conventional steam boilers and integrated gasifier combined cycle plants that are planned for future construction. ‘Post-combustion’ systems wash carbon dioxide out of waste combustion gases before they go to the plant’s chimney with a continuously-recycled solvent. State-of-the-art designs are a significant improvement over the small capture units that have been used for half a century to produce carbon dioxide for carbonated drinks, dry ice, fire extinguishers and other industrial uses.

In gasification-based power plants with ‘pre-combustion’ capture the coal gas is reacted with steam to make hydrogen, which can be burnt in a gas turbine to raise electricity without producing carbon dioxide. New power plants of either type are expected to have similar costs and performance with capture. In the longer term other types of capture system may be tried out to see if they can give better performance. Perhaps the best know of these is oxyfuel combustion; pure oxygen is produced and used to burn the coal, giving nearly pure CO 2 with little additional processing. But there are also a lot of ways in which the current post-combustion and pre-combustion systems can be improved. So, as with all other new technologies, there are plenty of opportunities for industries to compete to produce better products and for users to take advantage of a competitive market with multiple suppliers.

There is a catch: capturing carbon dioxide costs money. With current designs about 25% extra fuel has to be burnt and additional equipment must be purchased. This adds between 30 and 40% to the cost of electricity. This may seem like a lot, but dividing the extra cost by the amount of carbon dioxide that is not emitted to atmosphere has been estimated to give ‘abatement costs’ of 25-30 %26euro; per tonne of CO2 (250-300 yuan or US$30-38), a price already reached last winter in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Although carbon prices are now lower, in the ETS and the international Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), it does show that financing CCS in China could be quite an effective way to offset emissions elsewhere in the world, especially as technology improves and capture costs go down. The key is reaching international agreement to pursue sustained and significant emission reductions.

Another way to finance CCS, at least at first, is through ‘enhanced oil recovery’ (EOR). Carbon dioxide, compressed to a liquid, can be placed underground in old oil and gas wells. In oil wells, the carbon dioxide can help to wash out oil that is stuck in the pores of the rock and cannot be released by other means. Current prices in the USA for carbon dioxide for EOR are around $20/tonne CO 2. Petrochina and CNOOC are currently examining similar EOR schemes in China. But, while old oil and gas reservoirs offer proven leak-tight storage and EOR can give an extra source of revenue, most of the potential storage capacity for carbon dioxide in China (and globally) is in deep layers of porous rock a kilometre or more underground that contain only salty water, known as saline aquifers. One of these, under the North Sea, has already been used successfully to store a million tonnes of CO 2 a year from the Norwegian Sleipner gas platform, and requires only a single injection pipe.

While we are waiting for the necessary political progress on climate change mitigation to make CCS a marketable service, Western governments have offered to work with China to find out how much carbon dioxide can be stored underground in China and where the best storage sites might be and also to build the first CO 2 capture plants in China. Preliminary results from an Australian storage capacity project are shown in Figure 1; this work will be continuing with a team of Chinese and international geologists. While it held the EU Presidency in 2005 the UK set up the UK-EU-China Near-Zero Emissions Coal (NZEC) project, which is planned to lead to a jointly-designed and constructed power plant with carbon capture and storage starting operation by 2014. There are also other CCS-related research and capacity-building projects with the EU and, under bilateral agreements, with individual countries and the number of these is set to increase significantly.

Figure 1: Large sources of carbon dioxide in China and regions for prospective deep geological storage in China

(Source: Newlands, I.K., Langford, R., 2005. CO2 Storage Prospectivity of Selected Sedimentary Basins in the Region of China and South East Asia, Geoscience Australia, Record 2005/13. 223pp.)

China can also follow Western developments by seeing that new power plants are built to be ‘capture-ready’. This means that a few simple and inexpensive changes (principally space in the right places and access to carbon dioxide storage sites) are included at the design stage so that capture equipment can be added without prohibitive costs in the future. Utility companies building power plants in Europe and the USA are already doing this in their domestic markets to make sure they can use CCS to avoid large cost penalties for CO 2 emissions in the future.

Another energy-related development that prepares for CCS is introducing new ways to use ‘decarbonised’ energy, electricity and hydrogen. Even when the carbon dioxide produced in the production process is captured, making synthetic gasoline or diesel fuel from coal still results in half of the coal carbon being emitted to atmosphere. In contrast, using electricity made from coal with CCS in an electric vehicle or a new plug-in hybrid vehicle or using hydrogen made from coal, releases only about 10% of the carbon in the coal. Greater use of decarbonised energy reduces demand for expensive oil and natural gas in the short term and it can be produced from a wide range of non-fossil energy sources (nuclear, renewables, geothermal) as well as from fossil fuels with CCS. This allows the same motor vehicle technology to be sold into a wide range of markets and to be used unchanged while new energy technologies, like CCS, are introduced to tackle climate change.

In some respects the challenge of capturing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and pumping it deep underground sounds impossibly large. But this is because the world`s energy sector is itself so big. At the level of the power plant all that is required are some additional items of equipment: large but much less complex and costly than the existing steam or gas turbine generation machinery. Carbon dioxide capture and storage can similarly become a standard part of fossil fuel utilization – provided we act with urgency to use the irreplaceable opportunity that we have now to build up experience on CCS and to make all new power plants capture-ready, before growing awareness of climate change mandates widespread deployment.

The author: Dr Jon Gibbins is at the Energy Technology for Sustainable Development Group, Mechanical Engineering Department, Imperial College London. He is Principal Investigator for the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Consortium.

Homepage photo by Bret Arnett

Perhaps the biggest difference between food in the West and in China is that Chinese people like to eat lots of little snacks whereas Westerners prefer one %26lsquo;main meal`. In the West, restaurants and fast food outlets produce standardised meals, where quantities are strictly regulated. But the Chinese have a long history of eating snacks. Traditionally an agricultural country, when farmers went out onto the fields, they would bring snacks with them to eat and to share with friends, or would swap them with farmers from neighbouring villages. The quality of the snack was important – it would indicate how skilful the wife was in the kitchen and help the family to maintain their %26lsquo;face`. So over the centuries the quality of these snacks became better and better, so that gradually, all over China, one could find snacks that were both delicious and safe.

I think that when people eat snacks, their trust in what they are eating and the need to %26lsquo;keep face` is more important than the actual eating of the snack itself. But now these snacks that have such a long and glorious history strike terror in people`s hearts. Let`s just look at pickled vegetables. Although pickled vegetables were first made in Sichuan, there is hardly anyone in the whole country who hasn`t tasted this delicious snack. But now when you visit Sichuan, your friends will say to you: %26lsquo;Do you like pickled vegetables? There`s a factory in Chengdu that pickles the vegetables in DDVP.` In the past everyone in Sichuan would have pickled vegetables with their meals, but now the managers of some pickled vegetable factories say that, %26lsquo;We don`t eat any of these pickles in Sichuan, we sell them to people from other provinces.`

After some secret interviews, I finally uncovered the truth about this business. The most important part of the pickling process is the soaking. I noticed that the salt used in the pickling was not only whiter than most salt, but the grains were finer. So I asked, %26lsquo;How come it`s so white?` The manager said, %26lsquo;This salt is bought on the black market. It`s cheaper by 50 yuan a jin.` Later in the yard outside, I saw printed on the bags of salt the terrifying words, %26lsquo;Industrial Salt`, and %26lsquo;Not for human consumption.`

The workers of this factory showed me in another yard neatly arranged piles of this industrial salt. I asked, %26lsquo;Have you always used this salt?` They said, %26lsquo;Yes.` I said, %26lsquo;Do the other factories use it?` And the workers all nodded in reply. A few days later I returned to the factory, and noticed lots of little insects crawling around the vats of pickled vegetables, and I asked why there were so many insects. The manager said, %26lsquo;When we soak the vegetables there are always a lot of insects, but when we add the chemicals they all disappear.` A little later, a worker started adding chemicals to the vats. I asked what the chemicals were and the worker replied that they were insect killers. He also said that to ensure that no insects got to them, the pickles would be sprayed with insecticide every two or three days until they left the factory. When I asked exactly what kind of insecticide it was, both the manager and the workers said that they didn`t know. Because there was no label on the bottle of the chemical they used, I took a small sample of the red liquid, put it in a sealed container and sent it off to be checked by the China Food Import Export Investigation Centre, and was told that this chemical was 99% strength DDVP . . .

Only about a third of the pickles produced in Chengdu meet with the regulations imposed by the Chengdu Quality Inspection Department. On 16 June 2004, the Chengdu Quality Inspection Department announced the results of its survey into pickled vegetables. Of 70 batches of products produced by 56 factories, only 16 batches made the grade, which is a pass rate of just 22.86%. 17 batches had levels of additives above the maximum allowed. It was also discovered that 9 batches did not have as much product as labelled and 48 batches had labels that were inaccurate or had insufficient information. The Quality Inspection Department has requested that all those companies that didn`t make the grade rectify their mistakes.

In Guizhou there is a saying that %26lsquo;If you don`t eat something sour for three days, your legs will go soft`. The Guizhou restaurants have become famous for their sour fish soups, but recently 215 of them have developed some serious problems. On 16 June 2004, it was found that in 215 restaurants, there were high levels of opiates in their soup and flavourings, and the authorities have ordered these restaurants to be closed down. Zhang Xin, deputy head of Guizhou`s Anti-drug team, told me that the Anti-drug team joined forces with the disease prevention centre and the food quality inspection department to launch a campaign against the addition of opiates to food products. A combined investigation team carried out research in to 2642 restaurants in Guiyang, Bijie and Liupanshui, and found that in 215 restaurants, the food sold contained traces of opiates in varying quantities. During the campaign, 3,200 grams of opiate seeds and 1,700 grams of opiate shells were confiscated. The relevant authorities have closed these 215 restaurants, and ordered 36 other restaurants whose problems were a less serious to undergo retraining. It is said that many Guizhou restaurants that specialise in beef, lamb, dog, and spicy soups add opiates to their food so as to encourage their customers to return. Wei Tao, the deputy head of the Guizhou Disease Prevention Office, told me that some of the soups served at the restaurants contain traces of morphine, some in rather high quantities. He said that if the customers drink this soup over a long period of time they can become addicted to it, and their dependency might even drive them to take harder drugs.