Here Comes the Chinese Monster

China is growing faster than Robin Williams in that movie Jack, but U.S. environmental policy makers don’t seem to get it.  At least, they don’t seem ready to admit that China’s carbon-intensive growth is inevitable, and requires headier climate policy solutions than blindly hoping China signs onto a new Kyoto.  Rather than debate what to do given the Chinese energy explosion we’re seeing, many environmentalists are still stuck on whether to try to stop China from developing at it’s breakneck dirty pace, or to give in and try to help them develop cleanly.  It’s seems that they’re likening the situation to swimming against the current, or swimming with it.  Except with China, the “current” of rising energy demand is more like a gigantic roaring unstoppable tsunami, or maybe an asteroid hitting the earth.  Just kidding.  But it’s not going to be turning around any time soon.

Many environmentalists bemoan this new growth because of the havoc Western industrialization wreaked on our own ecosystems, the size of China’s population (over 3 times that of the U.S.), and the impending doom of climate change.  We can throw the spread of consumer culture in there too, because god forbid other nations around the world adopt our own wasteful, self-indulgent ways.  And yet, is China’s growth really all that unjustified?  They are, after all, lifting close to a billion people out of poverty – and I know, I know, “poverty alleviation” isn’t a traditional “environmental” value, but let’s blow our categorical minds for a second and pretend we care.  Modernization brought us nearly every social benefit and technology we enjoy today – universal education, civil liberties, white collar jobs, the internet, etc.  Why do Chinese peasants deserve any less?  It’s obvious they don’t deserve less – they should have all the rights and freedoms we’ve obtained from our own material security, and yet our environmental movement is essentially saying they shouldn’t by demanding that China slow its growth.

But I think the meat and potatoes of the situation is this: regardless of whether you think industrialization of the West was good or bad, regardless of whether you think industrialization of China will be good or bad, it’s irrelevant.  Because industrialization of China is going to happen anyway, so we might as well start inventing energy solutions that help the Chinese achieve their development goals in a clean way, rather than trying to stop them or hope they’ll see the green light totally on their own.

If you read my post yesterday, or if you consume fossil fuels, you know that our economy is headed into a recession due to the high price of oil and rising global energy demand.  We’re not going to Kyoto our way out of a recession, just as China is not going to Kyoto it’s way to poverty alleviation and development.  What will help both of our economies, however, is cheap renewable energy – and the high-tech jobs, industry and growth that will come with their wide-scale implementation.  That sort of investment-centered solution doesn’t require skimping, cutting growth, and leaving a billion people sitting in the dust of rural poverty.  It also doesn’t require the compromise of dirty coal to give people a decent standard of living.  What it does is require is the best innovation humanity has to offer, and a sizeable investment by the wealthiest nations on earth.  Let’s see it as an effort to promote something our forefathers would have found valuable: the universal right to food, electricity, and the pursuit of happiness.