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The volume of carbon dioxide belched into the atmosphere from human activity this year is on track to decline slightly from last year's emissions, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday. The anticipated decrease in CO2 emissions comes even as the world economy is growing, suggesting a turning point in clean energy development—and a long-hoped-for "decoupling" of economic growth and increased carbon emissions.
[...] Decreased coal use in China—whose carbon dioxide emissions account for nearly one-third of global emissions—was largely responsible for the decline in global emissions, the researchers concluded. After a decade of rapid growth, China's emissions rate slowed to 1.2 percent in 2014 and is expected to drop by approximately 3.9 percent in 2015, according to the report. More than half of new energy needs in China were met in 2014 from non-fossil fuel sources, such as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar power.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by TobascoKid on Tuesday December 08 2015, @02:42PM
Don't the figures for China indicate the exact opposite of 'a long-hoped-for "decoupling" of economic growth and increased carbon emissions'? 2014/15 has been a pretty crappy time for Chinese growth.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:06PM
China's not even trying to green. They are at the peak of their bubble, kinda like the Japanese bubble of the 80s or the American bubble of the 1920s and 2000s. China's in for a world of hurt. Their collapse is going to be utterly epic.
The article didn't report on Germany which is pretty crazy green and is likely what they meant by that weird isolated quote. Some of that is political rather than economic "I don't care how much it costs we're not going to have the Russians keep telling us what to do in order to buy their natgas". It helps that Germany is not 3rd world even after the refugee invasion and doesn't have the expenses of empire like the USA has. We could be as green as Germany if we could just avoid invading one middle eastern country, its actually pretty cheap compared to re-enacting Vietnam over and over. Germany is pretty close to self sufficient. Not there, but getting there very fast. Some day in the 2020's Russia is going to do its Bear thing and tell Germany "When I say jump you better ask how high or I'm not selling you natgas anymore" and the Germans are going to respond with a big F you instead of caving behind a shield of bluster like they always do. The political fallout will be interesting. Probably not military action, hopefully, but it'll be interesting. Germany being able to tell Russia to F off will be interesting. Along with the capital flow from Germany to Russia disappearing. No need to pay for natgas if you're not buying any...
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:50PM
China's not even trying to green.
This 83.3 billion dollars says otherwise. [fs-unep-centre.org]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:33AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:51PM
pretty much agree. but dont forget that russia could be very super high tech by 2020.
they got a few super blue prints and scientiscts and methods from the ww2 germany (sputnik, helicopters, manufacturing) and europe is also super bigh tech overall. also russia was in the ring w/ usa for a long time and even if they lost they got a bunch of "training".
it is amerika that doesnt want this to happen so they are fraying the geografic edges around europa and russia ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @07:53PM
It's not the same. The US eventually left Vietnam...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 08 2015, @05:29PM
The problem with looking at country-wide economies is that there's always all sorts of bogus correlations and missed real correlations. As in, there are simply ridiculous numbers of economic decisions being made that may or may not be related to any other economic decision being made.
It's possible that CO2 output and economic growth are correlated. If so, we're doomed, because no country will accept the decreased economic growth in order to fix the CO2 problem - instead each player will demand that everybody else accept the lower economic growth and thereafter treat it as Somebody Else's Problem.
It's also quite possible that it's not, and the real reason China's in trouble economically is that the consumers in their export markets are lacking the purchasing power to buy up all their products. In this case, China's going to have to completely re-tool their economy to deal with that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @08:17PM
no country will accept the decreased economic growth
There is a growing body of economic thought that "economic growth" is neither necessary nor desirable, at least in the way we have sought to obtain growth in the past.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-gustave-speth/growth-fetish-five-reason_b_4018166.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://steadystate.org/discover/downsides-of-economic-growth/ [steadystate.org]
Related, but not exactly the same thing:
We need horizontal growth, not vertical growth. It does the world no good to raise the standard of living in the EU, or the US, while leaving huge segments of the world living in utter poverty and despair. But this is a moral argument, and not really an economic one. Many economists are starting to believe that new industry should be located in poorer countries, rather than yet another factory in China or the US. And not because of lower wages, but precisely because doing so will raise those wages.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.