Analysis: Behind China's smokescreen on climate change

The Chinese government's irresponsible stance toward mitigating climate change, based on its developing country status, is increasingly untenable. China is the world's fourth largest economy and, according to a new report, is now the top emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas heating up the planet.

Global warming is an unintended consequence of the global trading system. Now is not the time for finger pointing between the developed and developing worlds: CO2 and other gases are nearing cumulative crisis levels. Culpability for shifting polluting industries from rich to poor countries goes to both sides, and demonstrates that a favorable investment environment does not promise investment favorable to the environment.

China continues to be both a beneficiary of globalization, with capital and technology inflows creating jobs for its massive population, and its benefactor, providing markets with low-cost products. This process began nearly 30 years ago when China abandoned Maoist principles in pursuit of profit as the guiding ideology for its political economy.

The policy of economic reform and opening to the outside world permitted foreign investors and hardworking individual Chinese new opportunities to generate wealth, raising the collective level of prosperity and taking hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty at the expense of the world's ecosystem.

President Hu Jintao heads a communist coterie reared in the ethos of an authoritarian one- party state, lacking accountability and with a deeply entrenched sense of entitlement to dispensation regarding global obligations. Neither view helps Hu and crew meet new challenges such as acknowledging China's role in the greenhouse gas problem and taking the lead in searching for a solution.
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Patio heaters produce more CO2 than a small city

The government should ban patio heaters, say environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth. A recent survey by British Gas suggests there could be a massive increase in the use of patio heaters following the introduction of the smoking ban this summer. (Green Building)

Earlier this year Friends of the Earth revealed that leading garden chain Wyevale are to stop selling patio heaters following concerns about their impact on climate change. Subsequently garden centre chain Notcutts told the environmental campaign group that they will follow suit and "have now elected to sell through current stocks of Gas and Electric Patio heaters and not to stock in the future".

Estimates of the impact that patio heaters have on climate change vary. The Energy Saving Trust has worked out that a propane patio heater with a heat output of 12.5kW will produce around 34.8kg of CO2 before the fuel runs out (after approximately 13 hours). This is equivalent to the energy required to produce approximately 5,200 cups of tea (or 400 cups for every hour of operation)

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