China Commits To Its First Firm Carbon Target

If the U.N.’s Copenhagen Climate Summit does only one thing, it will have been to get China to commit to its first firm target to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, the goal that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will take to Copenhagen doesn’t amount to much — to achieve by 2020 a 40%-50% cut in the [...]

Another Lead Poisoning Scandal

Another case of lead poisoning of children is being put under state media’s spotlight. The Huaqiang Battery Plant in Longyan in Fujian has been closed down after 121 local children of 287 tested were found to be have excessive levels of lead in their blood, People’s Daily reports.
This comes barely a month after hundreds of [...]

Tianjin Takes A Lead In Carbon Cap and Trade

Tianjin looks set to become the first of China’s designated carbon trading exchanges to be up and running in an organized way, according to a Financial Times report.  The Tianjin Climate Exchange, a joint venture between the Chicago Climate Exchange, PetroChina and Tianjin’s municipal government, expects to start trading within the year.
The China Beijing Environmental [...]

Third Toxic Smelter Closed

The smelter scandal is starting to echo last year’s melamine-tainted infant formula in that it is spreading out of control. A third plant within a month is being closed because children living near it are falling ill. In this case it is a manganese smelter in Wenping in Hunan. More than 1,300 local children are [...]

Traffic Restrictions Reimposed In Beijing

Olympic-style traffic restrictions are back in Beijing. This time each car will have to spend one day a week off the roads, as opposed to every other day as during the Games. On Monday, cars whose registration number ended in a 1 or 6 were grounded. Tuesday will see 2s and 7s off the roads, [...]

National People’s Congress

The National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, opens its annual session on Wednesday.
The NPC largely rubber stamps decisions taken by the party’s ruling elite, but it will introduce the new line up of the State Council and who gets the senior cabinet appointments will provide a pointer to who will take over from the Hu-Wen leadership [...]

Bali Result: China 1 – 0 U.S.

Those scoring the undercard match between the U.S. and China at the U.N. conference on climate change in Bali would have given it to China on points.
Beijing scored for being seen to be a constructive participant whereas Washington was seen as obstructive. China’s media has been playing up U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments about how [...]

Bali High

China is a polluted place but getting less so. That according to Germanwatch, a German environment watchdog that releases an annual ranking of the most environmentally friendly industrialized and developing countries.
Its latest annual Climate Change Performance Index, which covers 56 countries that account for 90% of global carbon dioxide emissions and was released at the [...]

Warming To Climate Change

The success of the U.N’s two-week long climate conference in Bali will turn a lot on what China signs on for. The meeting is intended to get all countries working on how the world will mitigate the effects of global warming once the decade-old Kyoto agreement expires in 2012.
Kyoto was a fractious affair, with rich [...]