Environment & Energy

cprise

(8,445 posts) Mon Dec 30, 2013, 10:24 PM Dec 2013

Australia facing slump as China 'goes green'

Australia facing slump as China 'goes green'

Kieran Cooke

24th December 2013

(...)But a new report by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (SSEE) at Oxford in the UK warns that Australia's coal mining party could be coming to an end.

It says coal demand in China looks likely to fall in the years ahead due to concerns about climate change and other factors, leaving billions of dollars of investments in Australian coal mining projects in jeopardy.

It also gives powerful confirmation to the 'carbon bubble' theory advanced by Carbon Tracker and 350.org - that most of the fossil fuel 'assets' supporting energy company valuations will prove to be unburnable and have no value.

(...snip)

The study points out that China is investing heavily in renewables and has made clear in the present four-year plan its commitment to increasing energy efficiency and developing alternative non-fossil fuel supplies.

The authorities in Beijing have also introduced carbon pricing and trading, with the first emissions trading scheme implemented in the southern city of Shenzhen in mid-2013.

(more)

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2210847/australia_facing_slump_as_china_goes_green.html

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Australia facing slump as China 'goes green' (Original Post) cprise Dec 2013 OP

Well I hope they do go green because currently they are mostly brown, tinged with black soot and gtar100 Dec 2013 #1

None too soon - "8 million acres of China’s farmland is now too polluted to grow crops" kristopher Dec 2013 #2

gtar100

(4,192 posts)

1. Well I hope they do go green because currently they are mostly brown, tinged with black soot and

Reply to cprise (Original post)

Mon Dec 30, 2013, 10:59 PM

Dec 2013

a disgusting, putrid grayish orange that reeks of waste and filth. Green is a long way off if they don't make changes quickly.

Seriously, I hope they do it and become a model of clean industrial practices. Because if they don't, we are all screwed.

kristopher

(29,798 posts)

2. None too soon - "8 million acres of China’s farmland is now too polluted to grow crops"

Reply to cprise (Original post)

Tue Dec 31, 2013, 12:14 AM

Dec 2013

China Says 8 Million Acres Of Farmland Now Too Polluted For Food
BY EMILY ATKIN ON DECEMBER 30, 2013

An official from the Chinese government announced Monday that approximately 3.33 million hectares, or 8 million acres, of China’s farmland is now too polluted to grow crops, according to a Reuters report from Beijing.

China’s Vice Minister of Land and Resources Wang Shiyuan reportedly told a news conference that current farming on the now-too-contaminated land — roughly the size of Belgium — will be halted and rehabilitated in order to ensure food safety. It was unclear late Monday whether food that had already been grown on that land would be sought out or recalled.

“These areas cannot continue farming,” Wang said, noting that the Ministry of Environmental Protection had deemed all of the 8 million acres as having “moderate to severe pollution.”

The Chinese government has said that the country needs at least 120 million hectares of arable land to ensure it is able to meet the vastly populated country’s food needs. Though China started 2013 with a strong 135 million hectares of arable land, contamination — paired with recent efforts to convert farmland to forests, grasslands and wetlands — has caused the amount of stable cultivated land to drop to 120 million hectares, Wang said. Wang also said the country is committed to spending “tens of billions of yuan” a year for projects aimed at rehabilitating polluted land.

High levels of contamination caused by pollution ...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/30/3108211/china-polluted-farmland-food/

I don't know if the impression left is accurate, but the article cites particulate pollution from coal as the representative example of causal agents.

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