POL POSITION:Hold China’s power plants accountable for pollution

In the summer of 2008, the 29th Olympic Games will open in Beijing. Taking advantage of worldwide attention brought about by the Olympics, China will no doubt try to show the world it is now a modern political and economic superpower rivaling the United States and the countries of the European Union.

China likes to talk about its growth, rapid modernization and influence, but what it doesn’t like to talk about is its increasing contribution to worldwide pollution. Although China claims it is spending money on cleaner sources of energy, these claims are not supported by facts. Almost every week a new coal-fired power plant comes on-line somewhere in China. These plants are not the “clean coal” type of the future. Instead, they are built as cheaply as possible and the energy they burn is even cheaper. They will be pumping huge amounts of sulfur dioxide and CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere for the next 75 years.

This isn’t just bad news for the Chinese. Scientists estimate as much as one-third of the air pollution we have in California is the result of pollution that has traveled from China.

It seems China has adopted a split-personality, playing the part of modern-day world power when it wants to, but then claiming to be a poor developing nation when confronted with its terrible environmental record. The argument for this double standard is developing nations need to “catch up” with the industrialized world, so they shouldn’t be bothered with environmental regulations that may slow down their growth. This approach is careless at best and catastrophic at worst. Without responsible investment in clean energy sources, cities in the developing world, including China, will be covered in smog for the next century.

To solve this worldwide problem, we need a global solution that involves the participation of both developed and developing countries. It has been a decade since the U.S. Senate passed a resolution by a vote of 95-0, declaring America should not enter into a treaty concerning the reduction of air pollution when such a treaty placed absolutely no restrictions on developing nations. The correctness of that Senate position has recently been validated by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which released a study last month concluding China had indeed surpassed the United States in the amount of CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere.

Despite criticism from around the world, China has stated it intends to continue building “dirty” power plants. In order to avoid future scenarios like what is happening in China, a more pro-active approach needs to be taken with the other developing countries of the world. By encouraging and helping those developing countries to build cleaner and more efficient power plants, we can avoid the real climate disaster that is bound to happen if we do nothing.