{"id":217974,"date":"2010-01-19T10:21:49","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T15:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"tag:http:\/\/www.economist.com,2009:21004382"},"modified":"2010-01-19T10:21:49","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T15:21:49","slug":"chinese-cities-are-greener-than-american-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217974","title":{"rendered":"Chinese cities are greener than American cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHINA recently became the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. A little over one-fifth of all the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year is produced in China (America is responsible for about 18% of global emissions, and Europe 14%). And yet, there’s this:<\/p>\n

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China\u2019s major cities\u2019 household carbon emissions are dramatically lower than in the US. Glaeser and Kahn (2010) report that in the cleanest cities of San Diego and San Francisco, a standardised household emits around 26 tons of CO2 per year \u2013 albeit with a much higher standard income of $62,500. Shanghai\u2019s standardised household, meanwhile, produces 1.8 tons of carbon and Beijing\u2019s standardised household produces 4.0 tons. Even in China\u2019s brownest city, Daqing, a standardised household emits only one-fifth of the carbon produced by one in America\u2019s greenest cities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s from an interesting Vox piece<\/a> by Matthew Kahn and Siqi Zheng, discussing new research they’ve produced on the emissions profiles of Chinese cities. It’s a nice read; the authors focus on how Chinese emissions patterns differ from those in developed nations and how Chinese regional policies are likely to influence the path of emissions growth.<\/p>\n

But a key takeaway is the tricky position in which China finds itself. Its residents contribute far less to global warming than typical Americans or Europeans, but because there are 1.3 billion of them, they’ve already become the largest producer of greenhouse gases. As the authors note, if Chinese citizens emitted carbon at developed nation rates, global emissions would be 50% higher. And obviously, one of the main goals of the Chinese leadership is to achieve something like a developed nation standard of living for its residents.<\/p>\n

China should just approach America with a deal: it will agree limit its per capita emissions to one half the current American level if America will agree to halve its per capita emissions. Seems fair, does it not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHINA recently became the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. A little over one-fifth of all the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year is produced in China (America is responsible for about 18% of global emissions, and Europe 14%). And yet, there’s this: China\u2019s major cities\u2019 household carbon emissions are dramatically lower than in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4064,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4064"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}