At a White House-sponsored conference on climate change at the end of September, President Bush called for a global fund to pay for clean energy projects in developing countries. The conference was attended by many countries, both developed industrial countries and developing countries that have high rates of greenhouse gas emissions.
The response from other countries attending was underwhelming. “This here was a great step for the Americans and
 |
Participants at the conference included Russia, Britain, France and Germany, Australia, Japan, China, Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea, plus the European Union and the United Nations. Iran, which has a high rate of emissions, was excluded.
In his speech, Bush said countries should establish methods to solve the emissions crisis without impacting economic growth. However, Bush continues to reject mandatory emission-reductions. He also refuses to participate in a global agreement that does not put limits on emissions from the developing world.
It is well known that the current global warming crisis is the result of untrammeled capitalist industrial development—but Bush wants to draw an equal sign between economically developed, imperialist countries and those that are trying to catch up after centuries of imperialist exploitation. Marxists know there is no equal sign here.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to try to scapegoat developing countries, especially China, for causing global warming due to current high levels of emissions.
It is true that China has an overall high level of carbon emissions, although the per capita rate of emissions is much lower than that of the United States. However, what is not so well known is that China is becoming a leader the development and manufacture of renewable energy technology.
China currently gets eight percent of its energy from renewable sources, and the official target is to build that up to around 15 percent by 2020. These sources include hydropower and solar power.
Chinese enterprises, supported by government policies that encourage renewable energy, have also introduced new stoves that burn crop waste instead of coal. These stoves create almost no emissions at all.
According to Yingling Liu, China program manager for Worldwatch Institute, “China has the potential to be a world leader in the renewable energy sector. … What is promising is that changes (in China) are happening in the right directions towards cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, and the trends will likely be accelerated.”
The acceleration will occur in part simply because China itself is a huge market and will need to figure out how to cheaply produce large quantities of renewable energy products in order to meet their own needs.
Additionally, China’s role as the “global factory floor” has the potential to drive down the cost of renewable energy products worldwide. For instance, China is already the biggest and cheapest exporter of energy efficient light-bulbs. Within a global capitalist economic framework, more people are likely to use energy saving fluorescent bulbs if the initial cost of the bulbs is lower.
Finger-pointing at China over carbon emissions is one more attempt to draw attention away from the real causes of the global warming crisis. It is also an attempt to demonize a country that is trying to overcome centuries of imperialist exploitation while forging an independent path on the global stage.
