It isn’t often that a state of emergency is declared over a disaster that is 100% man-made and intentional, but that’s exactly what has happened in the city of Flint, Michigan.

As residents in the city struggle to find drinkable water, the National Guard has been deployed to help distribute bottled water to residents.

The crisis actually began about 18 months ago when Republican governor Rick Snyder made the decision to balance the city’s budget at the expense of the health and safety of residents of Flint.

The governor and his appointed ‘budget experts’ decided to save the city some money by switching their water supply from the city of Detroit’s supply to the Flint River.

And according to Occupy Democrats, this river was known to be both highly polluted and carried an unusually high salt content. The high salinity of this water caused the city’s pipes to begin eroding, which then leached lead into the city’s water.

They knew. And we know they knew

Again, the governor and state officials were aware of the lead problem the entire time it was happening, according to internal emails between the governor and officials. In spite of that knowledge, they waited 18 months before declaring a state of emergency.

And the public would have remained in the dark had it not been for medical professionals coming forward to explain what was happening to Flint residents and their children. The entire problem could have been avoided at a cost to the city of less than $100 per day.

In the midst of this crisis, and just days before the state of emergency was declared, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wrote an op-ed attacking the EPA’s Clean Water Rule.

In the op-ed, Ryan declares that the stricter rules (finalized by the EPA this past summer which gives the agency authority to regulate smaller bodies of water to limit pollution) are a prime example of government overreach and that the only goal is for an “overzealous federal bureaucracy” to micromanage how citizens use water. 

Describing the Act as “another example of Washington bureaucrats sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong”, Ryan points out in his article that 32 governors have filed lawsuits against the EPA and the Obama administration in order to block the rule from ever taking effect, and a Circuit Court temporarily blocked implementation of the rule back in October.

While Speaker Ryan claims that he objects to the rule because it does damage to small farmers and ranchers, his real goal is to protect the corporate powerhouses who lobbied against the new rules. Those wealthy interests include the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, mining company owners, and several businesses owned by the Koch brothers.

These groups have little to no interest in farming activities, but they are all either major polluters through their dirty energy businesses, or they represent the interests of polluters from both the energy and industrial manufacturing sectors.

Companies right to pollute trumps people’s right to clean water

And according to a guy like Paul Ryan, the desire of companies to pollute entire towns is more important than the health and safety of American citizens.

Those health concerns are not hypothetical, either. Thanks to medical professionals in the city of Flint, we know exactly what kind of adverse health effects we’re looking at as a result of Republican-sponsored pollution: impaired cognitive development, behavioral problems, and nervous system damage.

These are not short-term effects either, these problems will plague the residents of Flint – especially young children exposed to high amounts of lead – for the rest of their lives. Lead exposure and consumption at such a young age is also linked to increased crime among the exposed, and anti-social behavior.

As filmmaker Michael Moore, who is originally from Flint, put it: “To poison all the children in an historic American city is no small feat. Even international terrorist organizations haven’t figured out yet how to do something on a magnitude like this. But you did.

“Your staff and others knew that the water in the Flint River was poison – but you decided that taking over the city and ‘cutting costs’ to ‘balance the budget’ was more important than the people’s health (not to mention their democratic rights to elect their own leaders).

“So you cut off the clean, fresh glacial lake water of Lake Huron that the citizens of Flint (including myself) had been drinking for decades and, instead, made them drink water from the industrial cesspool we call the Flint River – a body of ‘water’ where toxins from a dozen General Motors and DuPont factories have been dumped for over a hundred years.

“And then you decided to put a chemical in this water to ‘clean’ it – which only ended up stripping the lead off of Flint’s aging water pipes, placing that lead in the water and sending it straight into people’s taps.”

The crisis in Flint, Michigan will likely repeat itself if corporations continue to influence the behavior of our elected officials. It could become the new normal.

Farron Cousins is the executive editor of The Trial Lawyer magazine, and his articles have appeared on DeSmogBlog, The Huffington Post, Alternet, The Progressive Magazine. He is also co-host and producer of the Ring of Fire radio program. Follow him on Twitter @farronbalanced.

This article was originally published on DeSmogBlog. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The founders of Cornell University, Andrew D. White and Ezra Cornell, dreamed of creating a great university that took a radical approach to learning.

Their revolutionary spirit, and the promise to pursue knowledge for the greater good, is said to be at the heart of the Ivy League school their dream became.

It is difficult to understand how these ideals are served by a unit of Cornell operating as a public relations arm for the agrichemical industry.

Yet that is what seems to be going on at the Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS), a program launched in 2014 with a $5.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a goal to “depolarize the charged debate” about GMOs.

A review of the group’s materials and programs suggests that beneath its promise to “restore the importance of scientific evidence in decision making”, CAS is promoting GMOs using dishonest messaging and PR tactics developed by agrichemical corporations with a long history of misleading the public about science.

Communicating science or propaganda?

CAS is a communications campaign devoted to promoting genetically engineered foods (also known as GMOs) around the world. This is made clear in the group’s promotional video.

CAS Director Sarah Evanega, PhD, describes her group as a “communications-based nonprofit organization represented by scientists, farmers, NGOs, journalists and concerned citizens” who will use “interactive online platforms, multimedia resources and communication training programs to build a global movement to advocate for access to biotechnology.”

In this way, they say they will help alleviate malnourishment and hunger in developing countries, according to the video.

Dr. Evanega said her group has no connections to industry and receives no resources from industry. “We do not write for industry, and we do not advocate for or promote industry-owned products”, she wrote in a blog post titled ‘A Right to Be Known (Accurately)’ in which she pushed back against criticisms from my group, US Right to Know.

Yet the flagship programs of CAS – a 12-week course for Global Leadership Fellows and two-day intensive communications courses – teach communication skills to people who are “committed to advocating for increased access to biotechnology” specifically so they can “lead advocacy efforts in their local contexts.”

The group also has unusual dealings with journalists. What does it mean, as the CAS video states, that it is “represented by” journalists?

CAS offers journalism fellowships with cash awards for select journalists to “promote in-depth contextualized reporting” about issues related to food security, crop production, biotechnology and sustainable agricultural. Are these journalists also GMO advocates? How ethical is it for journalists to represent the policy positions of a pro-agrichemical-industry group?

Messaging for corporate interests

One thing is clear from the publicly available CAS messaging: the context they offer on the topic of genetically engineered foods is not in depth and comprehensive but rather highly selective and geared toward advancing the interests of the agrichemical industry.

For example, the video: Brimming with hope about the possibilities of GMOs to solve world hunger in the future, it ignores a large body of scientific research that has documented problems connected with GMOs – that herbicide-tolerant GMO crops have driven up the use of glyphosate, an herbicide linked to cancer by the world’s leading cancer experts; and accelerated weed resistance on millions of acres of US farmland, which makes crop production harder for farmers, not easier.

There is no mention of the failure of GMO crops designed to ward off harmful insects, or the rising concerns of medical doctors about patterns of illness in places like Hawaii and Argentina where exposures are heaviest to the chemicals associated with GMOs.

There is no recognition that many scientists and food leaders have said GMOs are not a priority for feeding the world, a debate that is a key reason GMO crops have not been widely embraced outside of the United States and Latin America.

All these factors are relevant to the discussion about whether or not developing countries should embrace genetically engineered crops and foods. But CAS leaves aside these details and amplifies the false idea that the science is settled on the safety and necessity of GMOs.

Disseminating selective information of a biased or misleading nature to promote a particular agenda is known as the practice of propaganda.

Working from industry’s PR playbook

The Cornell Alliance for Science was supposed to present “a new vision for biotechnology communications”, yet the group relies on an established set of messages and communication tactics that are familiar to anyone who follows the PR campaigns of the agribusiness industry.

The report Spinning Food, which I co-authored with Kari Hamerschlag and Anna Lappé, documents how agribusiness and food industry funded groups are spending tens of millions of dollars a year to promote misleading messages about the safety and necessity of industrial-scale, chemical-intensive, genetically engineered agriculture.

The companies that profit most from this system – Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and other agrichemical giants – have repeatedly violated trust by misleading the public about science, as Gary Ruskin showed in his report Seedy Business. So they rely on front groups and third-party allies such as scientists and professors to spread their messaging for them.

A core industry narrative is that the science on GMO safety is settled. Pro-industry messengers focus on possible future uses of the technology while downplaying, ignoring or denying the risks; make inaccurate claims about the level of scientific agreement on GMOs; and attack critics who raise concerns as “anti-science.”

As one example, Mark Lynas, political director of CAS, wrote a New York Times op-ed accusing 17 European Union countries that banned GMO crop cultivation of “turning against science”. He dubbed them the “coalition of the ignorant”.

The article is heavy on attack and light on science, brushing over the topic with an inaccurate claim about a safety consensus that many scientists have disputed. As molecular geneticist Belinda Martineau, PhD, wrote in response to Lynas, “Making general claims about the safety of genetic engineering … (is) unscientific, illogical and absurd.”

The World Health Organization states, “it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.” Yet, while claiming to stand up for science, CAS routinely makes general – even outlandish – claims about GMO safety.

From the group’s FAQ:

• “You are more likely to be hit by an asteroid than be hurt by GE food – and that’s not an exaggeration.”
• “GE crops currently available to the public pose no greater health risks or environmental concerns than their non-engineered counterparts. This is not opinion.”

In fact, it is propaganda.

Battling transparency in science

In the spring of 2014, CAS launched a petition attacking my group US Right to Know for filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain the emails of publicly funded professors as part of our investigation into the food and agrichemical industries and their PR operations.

CAS called the FOIA requests a “witch hunt”, yet documents obtained via these FOIA requests generated news stories in several top media outlets about academics who were working with industry PR operatives on campaigns to promote GMOs without disclosing those ties to the public.

The story broke in a front-page New York Times article by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lipton, who explained how Monsanto, facing consumer skepticism about GMOs, “retooled their lobbying and public relations strategy to spotlight a rarefied group of advocates: academics, brought in for the gloss of impartiality and weight of authority that come with a professor’s pedigree.”

In one case, reported by Laura Krantz in the Boston Globe, a Monsanto executive told Harvard professor Calestous Juma to write a paper about how GMOs are needed to feed Africa.

“Monsanto not only suggested the topic to professor Calestous Juma. It went so far as to provide a summary of what the paper could say and a suggested headline. The company then connected the professor with a marketing company to pump it out over the Internet as part of Monsanto’s strategy to win over the public and lawmakers”, Krantz wrote.

Juma said he took no money from Monsanto but noted he has received funding from the Gates Foundation, which has been partnering with Monsanto for years on pro-GMO projects after Rob Horsch, Monsanto’s veteran top executive for international development, joined the Foundation in 2006. Horsch now leads Gates’ agricultural research and development team.

A 2014 analysis by the research group GRAIN found that most of the $3 billion spent by Gates Foundation to feed the poor in Africa went to wealthy nations. A new report by Global Justice Now makes the case that Gates Foundation strategies, especially on agriculture, are exacerbating global inequality and entrenching corporate power globally.

The public has a right to know if academics posing as independent sources are working behind the scenes with corporations and their PR firms on coordinated messaging campaigns to push a corporate agenda.

CAS takes the position in its petition that the public doesn’t have a right to know about the ties between industry PR operatives and 14 public scientists who have “contributed to the scientific consensus about the safety of GMOs.”

The Cornell petition is accompanied by a photo montage featuring Carl Sagan, Madame Curie, Albert Einstein and other deceased scientists who have not signed the petition, stamped with the slogan, “I stand with the #Science14” – a bit of PR flair that mirrors the dishonest propaganda used to oppose GMO labeling.

Aligning with industry PR writers

At an esteemed institution like Cornell, you might expect to find experts in science or ethics teaching communication courses that promise to restore scientific integrity to public discourse. Instead, at CAS, you will find experts in crisis management communication who specialize in opposing public health regulations.

For example, Trevor Butterworth, a visiting fellow at Cornell and director of Sense About Science (which describes itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for sense about science!”) is partnering with CAS to teach students and scientists how to communicate with journalists about GMOs.

Butterworth has a long history of communicating science for the benefit of corporations wishing to keep their products unregulated. A 2009 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article by Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust about industry lobbying efforts on bisphenol A (BPA) identified him as a “chemical industry public relations writer.”

As an editor of STATS at George Mason University, Butterworth was a prolific defender of BPA who “regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry”, Kissinger and Rust wrote.

“STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.” (The tobacco industry, they noted, was lobbying alongside the chemical industry to keep BPA unregulated.)

Butterworth has also promoted industry positions arguing against regulations for vinyl plastic and phthalates, fracking, high fructose corn syrup and sugary sodas.

He now partners with CAS to teach students how to communicate about GMOs, and CAS political director Lynas sits on the advisory board of Sense About Science.

Lynas’ work raises more questions: Why does a science group need a political director? And why would CAS choose Lynas for the role? Lynas is not a scientist but an environmental writer who rose to sudden fame after embracing GMOs, and his science has been critiqued at length by scientists, reporters and professors.

Depolarizing the GMO debate?

Corporations have been known to deploy outrageous messaging when their products run into trouble; examples include “DDT is good for me”, “More doctors smoke Camels” and the Dutch Boy campaign to promote lead paint to children.

A low point for chemical industry messaging was its PR campaign to paint Silent Spring author Rachel Carson (and environmentalists in general) as murderers of millions of children in Africa for raising concerns about DDT. That sort of messaging is making a comeback in the GMO debate.

In September 2015, the CAS Speakers Series hosted Owen Paterson, a Conservative Member of the UK Parliament, for a talk titled, ‘Check Your Green Privilege: It’s Not Environmentally Friendly to Allow Millions to Die’.

Paterson’s speech was filled with hyperbolic claims about GMOs that lack scientific rigor – like the one that GMOs “are in fact safer than conventionally bred crops … one of the most environmentally friendly advances this world has ever seen … can save millions of lives that today are squandered by the ideology of massively supported environmental campaign groups.”

The speech garnered praise from the American Council on Science and Health, a well-known industry front group, in a blog by Dr. Gil Ross titled, ‘Billion Dollar Green Campaigns Kill Poor Children’.

Ross explained in the blog that the CAS Speakers Series was created, “to use facts to counter the perceived tendency of college students to follow the environmentalist mantra without too much thought … the concept of being afraid of genetic engineering is akin to looking under the bed for hobgoblins such as Godzilla, awakened by the atomic tests of the Cold War.”

Paterson and Ross are unhelpful to the image of scientific integrity CAS is trying to project. Ross is a convicted felon who spent time in jail for Medicaid fraud. Paterson, a former UK environment secretary, is widely seen as a climate change skeptic whose views are incompatible with science.

How are bloggers in Hawaii helping feed the poor in Africa?

With its year round growing season, the Hawaiian Islands are an important testing ground for GMOs. They are also ground zero for concerns about pesticides associated with GMOs, and a key focus of industry’s pro-GMO propaganda campaigns and allies such as CAS.

Elif Bealle, executive director of the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, has been active in grassroots efforts for pesticide reporting, bans and pesticide buffer zones around GMO crops. She has also been keeping an eye on CAS, which she said has been recruiting local bloggers and has associates on several of the Islands.

“They present themselves as ‘just concerned local residents’ or ‘neutral journalists.’ They are almost full time commenting on online newspaper articles, submitting, Community Voice Op-Eds, etc. Their blog posts are regularly picked up and disseminated by the biotech trade group website in Hawaii, the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association”, Bealle said.

For example, Joni Kamiya, a CAS Global Leadership Fellow, uses her blog, Hawaii Farmer’s Daughter, to promote the “safety and science” of GMOs with messaging that glosses over science and disparages GMO critics.

Kamiya is also an ‘independent expert’ for GMO Answers, a GMO PR website created by Ketchum PR firm and funded by agrichemical companies. Her articles are posted on Jon Entine’s Genetic Literacy Project, which was also tapped to publish the GMO promotion papers assigned by Monsanto and written by professors.

Kamiya also writes for the Kauai Farming and Jobs Coalition, a group with unknown funding that claims to “represent a wide range of individuals and organizations in our community” and promotes the Genetic Literacy Project and other food industry front groups such as the Center for Consumer Freedom.

Other CAS allies in the Islands include Lorie Farrell, a CAS associate who writes for GMO Answers and helped coordinate opposition to the GMO cultivation ban on the Big Island for Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United; and Joan Conrow, who has a consulting contract with Cornell and writes the confrontational blog Kauai Eclectic.

Their messaging follows a typical pattern: they claim a scientific consensus on GMO safety and attack people calling for transparency and safety as outsiders who are killing the ‘Aloha spirit’ of the Islands.

Arming the conflict

In his article, ‘The War on Genetically Modified Food Critics’, Tufts Professor Timothy Wise takes the media to task for falling for industry PR tactics and incorrectly reporting the science on GMO as “settled”.

“What we’re seeing is a concerted campaign to … paint GMO critics as anti-science while offering no serious discussion of the scientific controversy that still rages”, Wise wrote. One indicator of that campaign, he said, was the Gates Foundation award to Cornell to “depolarize” the debate over GM foods.

“The Gates Foundation is paying biotech scientists and advocates at Cornell to help them convince the ignorant and brainwashed public, who ‘may not be well informed,’ that they are ignorant and brainwashed … It’s kind of like depolarizing an armed conflict by giving one side more weapons”, Wise wrote.

Instead of arming the PR wars in service of industry, Cornell University should stand up for science by convening a more honest discussion about GMOs – one that acknowledges the risks as well as the benefits of genetically engineered foods.

One that refrains from attacking and instead seeks common ground with groups calling for transparency and health and safety standards.

CAS Director Dr. Evanega said her group does share common values around right to know and access to information, and she disputes the notion that CAS was formed to promote GMOs.

“So-called ‘GMOs’ are not a monolithic thing”, Dr. Evanega wrote in her blog. “For example, it makes no sense to cluster together such diverse technologies as bacteria engineered to produce insulin and papaya engineered to resist a virus. We support access – to innovation and the information that will help people make sound decisions based on science and evidence – not fear, emotions.”

Certainly GMOs are not a monolithic thing. That’s exactly why it is inaccurate and dishonest to claim that people are more likely to be hit by an asteroid than to be harmed by GMOs.

A science alliance that truly is about restoring integrity to science should illuminate a comprehensive record of research, not parrot the talking points of PR firms and corporate players.

Stacy Malkan is co-founder and co-director of the consumer group US Right to Know. She is author of the book, ‘Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry’, (New Society Publishing, 2007) and also co-founded the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

It’s official: 2015 was the warmest year on record. But those global temperature records only date back to 1850 and become increasingly uncertain the further back you go.

Beyond then, we’re reliant on signs left behind in tree rings, ice cores or rocks. So when was the Earth last warmer than the present?

The Medieval Warm Period is often cited as the answer. This spell, beginning in roughly 950AD and lasting for three centuries, saw major changes to population centres across the globe.

This included the collapse of the Tiwanaku civilisation in South America due to increased aridity, and the colonisation of Greenland by the Vikings.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Yes, some regions were warmer than in recent years, but others were substantially colder. Across the globe, averaged temperatures then were in fact cooler than today.

130,000 years ago, a rich British megafauna

To reach a point when the Earth was significantly warmer than today we’d need to go back 130,000 years, to a time known as the Eemian.

For about 1.8m years the planet had fluctuated between a series of ice ages and warmer periods known as ‘interglacials’. The Eemian, which lasted around 15,000 years, was the most recent of these interglacials (before the one we’re currently in).

Although global annual average temperatures were approximately 1 to 2C warmer than pre-industrial levels, high latitude regions were several degrees warmer still. This meant ice caps melted, Greenland’s ice sheet was reduced and the West Antarctic ice sheet may have collapsed. The sea level was at least 6m higher than today.

Across Asia and North America forests extended much further north than today and straight-tusked elephants (now extinct) and hippopotamuses were living as far north as the British Isles.

How do we know all this? Well, scientists can estimate the temperature changes at this time by looking at chemicals found in ice cores and marine sediment cores and studying pollen buried in layers deep underground.

Certain isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen in ice cores can determine the temperature in the past while pollen tells us which plant species were present and therefore gives us an indication of climatic conditions suitable for that species.

We know from air bubbles in ice cores drilled on Antarctica that greenhouse gas concentrations in the Eemian were not dissimilar to preindustrial levels. However orbital conditions were very different – essentially there were much larger latitudinal and seasonal variations in the amount of solar energy received by the Earth.

But to find our best analogue, we must go back 11 million years

So although the Eemian was warmer than today the driving mechanism for this warmth was fundamentally different to present-day climate change, which is down to greenhouses gases. To find a warm period caused predominantly by conditions more similar to today, we need to go even further back in time.

As climate scientists, we’re particularly interested in the Miocene (around 23 to 5.3 million years ago), and in particular a spell known as the Miocene Climate Optimum (11-17 million years ago). Around this time CO₂ values (350-400ppm) were similar to today and it therefore potentially serves as an appropriate analogue for the future.

During the Optimum, those carbon dioxide concentrations were the predominant driver of climate change. Global average temperatures were 2 to 4C warmer than preindustrial values, sea level was around 20m higher and there was an expansion of tropical vegetation.

However, during the later Miocene period CO₂ declined to below preindustrial levels, but global temperatures remained significantly warmer. What kept things warm, if not CO₂? We still don’t know exactly – it may have been orbital shifts, the development of modern ocean circulation or even big geographical changes such as the Isthmus of Panama narrowing and eventually closing off – but it does mean direct comparison with the present day is problematic.

Currently orbital conditions are suitable to trigger the next glacial inception. We’re due another ice age. However, as pointed out in a recent study in Nature, there’s now so much carbon in the atmosphere the likelihood of this occurring is massively reduced over the next 100,000 years.

Emma Stone is Research Associate in Climatology, University of Bristol.

Alex Farnsworth is Postdoctoral Researcher in Climatology, University of Bristol.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Economic and industrial data released today by the Chinese government’s statistical agency indicates the country’s carbon emissions likely fell by around 3%.

It also shows the contraction of key heavy industry sectors and the continued expansion of renewable energies are driving a wedge between total energy demand and coal use.

According to the data, China’s coal output fell by 3.5% in 2015, thermal power generation by 3%, coal imports by 30%, pig iron output by 4%, coking coal output by 7%, and cement by 5%.

All this suggests that both power sector coal consumption and total coal consumption probably fell by more than 4%. Total oil consumption grew only 1.1% in the first eleven months, gas consumption by 3.7% while cement production (which releases CO2 directly) fell by 4.9%. This indicates a fall of 3-4% in China’s fossil CO₂ emissions – roughly equal to Poland’s total emissions.

This is now China’s second year of declining pollution. As  reported last year, 2014 carbon emissions were down about 0.7% and the country’s coal burn was down some 3%. That was the first fall in China’s emissions since the Asian economic crisis more than 15 years ago.

Key drivers …

The main factors driving China’s declining carbon emissions include:

• Shrinking heavy industry. Nobody knows for sure how much China’s economy grew in 2015, but what seems clear is that heavy industry declined while services and private consumption grew significantly.
• Debt overhang. In response to the global financial crisis, China created the largest credit boom the world has ever seen, which ultimately led to the massive energy overcapacity and rapidly growing debt that are now weighing down on the economy.
• Booming renewable energy generation. China was able to reduce fossil fuel fired power generation by 3% while overall power demand increased 0.5% by adding 30GW of wind power and 17GW of solar capacity – a new world record for any country ever.
• Airpocalypse. The war on pollution continued to impact industry, and it’s reasonable to expected that action will be amplified following the horrendous air pollution episodes Beijing experienced this winter. As reported on Energydesk, the notorious China smog was 10% less intense in 2015 than it was the year before.

China has also acted this year to clamp down on coal mining, closing many smaller mines and banning new ones. in an effort to prevent over-supply. Over 1,000 small mines will be closed and the ban on new mining permits will last for three years.

But the new economic reality is not without challenges: the fight between dirty and clean power for space on the grid has only got worse as coal overcapacity continues to grow. New coal fired power stations are still being built owing to perverse economic incentives.

Meanwhile the debate over whether China’s high polluting industrial sectors would return to growth was essentially settled last year: They won’t. The economic bulls and bears are now divided on whether the service sector and high-end manufacturing can fill the gap left by shrinking state-owned heavy industry sectors, or whether the economy is headed for an outright stagnation.

Though the difference between these two scenarios would have significant consequences for China’s citizens, carbon emissions are likely to fall in either case since they come almost entirely from heavy manufacturing.

China’s 2016 goals – cut over-supply

The key drivers mentioned above will only intensify in 2016 – last year was just the beginning.

A lot of heavy industry companies have continued to operate despite lack of market demand and making losses. Allowing these ‘zombie’ operations to wind down, termed’ supply-side reform’ and ‘overcapacity reduction’ in Chinese political jargon, is the number one economic policy goal for the coming year, and an inevitability in any case.

Similarly, the growth in public and corporate debt continued to far outpace economic growth in 2015 as the government tried to stimulate the economy through credit expansion. This is clearly an unsustainable trend, and as China begins to deleverage its debt – another key policy goal set in the Economic Work Conference in December – energy intensive investment spending will fall further and reduce energy demand.

Basically, China’s CO₂ emissions are still on track to to peak and decline well ahead of the government’s official targets and projections. Another promising sign for the historic Paris climate agreement finalised late last year.

Lauri Myllyvirta is an author with Greenpeace Energydesk. She tweets @laurimyllyvirta.

This article was originally published by Greenpeace Energydesk. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Economic and industrial data released today by the Chinese government’s statistical agency indicates the country’s carbon emissions likely fell by around 3%.

It also shows the contraction of key heavy industry sectors and the continued expansion of renewable energies are driving a wedge between total energy demand and coal use.

According to the data, China’s coal output fell by 3.5% in 2015, thermal power generation by 3%, coal imports by 30%, pig iron output by 4%, coking coal output by 7%, and cement by 5%.

All this suggests that both power sector coal consumption and total coal consumption probably fell by more than 4%. Total oil consumption grew only 1.1% in the first eleven months, gas consumption by 3.7% while cement production (which releases CO2 directly) fell by 4.9%. This indicates a fall of 3-4% in China’s fossil CO₂ emissions – roughly equal to Poland’s total emissions.

This is now China’s second year of declining pollution. As  reported last year, 2014 carbon emissions were down about 0.7% and the country’s coal burn was down some 3%. That was the first fall in China’s emissions since the Asian economic crisis more than 15 years ago.

Key drivers …

The main factors driving China’s declining carbon emissions include:

• Shrinking heavy industry. Nobody knows for sure how much China’s economy grew in 2015, but what seems clear is that heavy industry declined while services and private consumption grew significantly.
• Debt overhang. In response to the global financial crisis, China created the largest credit boom the world has ever seen, which ultimately led to the massive energy overcapacity and rapidly growing debt that are now weighing down on the economy.
• Booming renewable energy generation. China was able to reduce fossil fuel fired power generation by 3% while overall power demand increased 0.5% by adding 30GW of wind power and 17GW of solar capacity – a new world record for any country ever.
• Airpocalypse. The war on pollution continued to impact industry, and it’s reasonable to expected that action will be amplified following the horrendous air pollution episodes Beijing experienced this winter. As reported on Energydesk, the notorious China smog was 10% less intense in 2015 than it was the year before.

China has also acted this year to clamp down on coal mining, closing many smaller mines and banning new ones. in an effort to prevent over-supply. Over 1,000 small mines will be closed and the ban on new mining permits will last for three years.

But the new economic reality is not without challenges: the fight between dirty and clean power for space on the grid has only got worse as coal overcapacity continues to grow. New coal fired power stations are still being built owing to perverse economic incentives.

Meanwhile the debate over whether China’s high polluting industrial sectors would return to growth was essentially settled last year: They won’t. The economic bulls and bears are now divided on whether the service sector and high-end manufacturing can fill the gap left by shrinking state-owned heavy industry sectors, or whether the economy is headed for an outright stagnation.

Though the difference between these two scenarios would have significant consequences for China’s citizens, carbon emissions are likely to fall in either case since they come almost entirely from heavy manufacturing.

China’s 2016 goals – cut over-supply

The key drivers mentioned above will only intensify in 2016 – last year was just the beginning.

A lot of heavy industry companies have continued to operate despite lack of market demand and making losses. Allowing these ‘zombie’ operations to wind down, termed’ supply-side reform’ and ‘overcapacity reduction’ in Chinese political jargon, is the number one economic policy goal for the coming year, and an inevitability in any case.

Similarly, the growth in public and corporate debt continued to far outpace economic growth in 2015 as the government tried to stimulate the economy through credit expansion. This is clearly an unsustainable trend, and as China begins to deleverage its debt – another key policy goal set in the Economic Work Conference in December – energy intensive investment spending will fall further and reduce energy demand.

Basically, China’s CO₂ emissions are still on track to to peak and decline well ahead of the government’s official targets and projections. Another promising sign for the historic Paris climate agreement finalised late last year.

Lauri Myllyvirta is an author with Greenpeace Energydesk. She tweets @laurimyllyvirta.

This article was originally published by Greenpeace Energydesk. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Economic and industrial data released today by the Chinese government’s statistical agency indicates the country’s carbon emissions likely fell by around 3%.

It also shows the contraction of key heavy industry sectors and the continued expansion of renewable energies are driving a wedge between total energy demand and coal use.

According to the data, China’s coal output fell by 3.5% in 2015, thermal power generation by 3%, coal imports by 30%, pig iron output by 4%, coking coal output by 7%, and cement by 5%.

All this suggests that both power sector coal consumption and total coal consumption probably fell by more than 4%. Total oil consumption grew only 1.1% in the first eleven months, gas consumption by 3.7% while cement production (which releases CO2 directly) fell by 4.9%. This indicates a fall of 3-4% in China’s fossil CO₂ emissions – roughly equal to Poland’s total emissions.

This is now China’s second year of declining pollution. As  reported last year, 2014 carbon emissions were down about 0.7% and the country’s coal burn was down some 3%. That was the first fall in China’s emissions since the Asian economic crisis more than 15 years ago.

Key drivers …

The main factors driving China’s declining carbon emissions include:

• Shrinking heavy industry. Nobody knows for sure how much China’s economy grew in 2015, but what seems clear is that heavy industry declined while services and private consumption grew significantly.
• Debt overhang. In response to the global financial crisis, China created the largest credit boom the world has ever seen, which ultimately led to the massive energy overcapacity and rapidly growing debt that are now weighing down on the economy.
• Booming renewable energy generation. China was able to reduce fossil fuel fired power generation by 3% while overall power demand increased 0.5% by adding 30GW of wind power and 17GW of solar capacity – a new world record for any country ever.
• Airpocalypse. The war on pollution continued to impact industry, and it’s reasonable to expected that action will be amplified following the horrendous air pollution episodes Beijing experienced this winter. As reported on Energydesk, the notorious China smog was 10% less intense in 2015 than it was the year before.

China has also acted this year to clamp down on coal mining, closing many smaller mines and banning new ones. in an effort to prevent over-supply. Over 1,000 small mines will be closed and the ban on new mining permits will last for three years.

But the new economic reality is not without challenges: the fight between dirty and clean power for space on the grid has only got worse as coal overcapacity continues to grow. New coal fired power stations are still being built owing to perverse economic incentives.

Meanwhile the debate over whether China’s high polluting industrial sectors would return to growth was essentially settled last year: They won’t. The economic bulls and bears are now divided on whether the service sector and high-end manufacturing can fill the gap left by shrinking state-owned heavy industry sectors, or whether the economy is headed for an outright stagnation.

Though the difference between these two scenarios would have significant consequences for China’s citizens, carbon emissions are likely to fall in either case since they come almost entirely from heavy manufacturing.

China’s 2016 goals – cut over-supply

The key drivers mentioned above will only intensify in 2016 – last year was just the beginning.

A lot of heavy industry companies have continued to operate despite lack of market demand and making losses. Allowing these ‘zombie’ operations to wind down, termed’ supply-side reform’ and ‘overcapacity reduction’ in Chinese political jargon, is the number one economic policy goal for the coming year, and an inevitability in any case.

Similarly, the growth in public and corporate debt continued to far outpace economic growth in 2015 as the government tried to stimulate the economy through credit expansion. This is clearly an unsustainable trend, and as China begins to deleverage its debt – another key policy goal set in the Economic Work Conference in December – energy intensive investment spending will fall further and reduce energy demand.

Basically, China’s CO₂ emissions are still on track to to peak and decline well ahead of the government’s official targets and projections. Another promising sign for the historic Paris climate agreement finalised late last year.

Lauri Myllyvirta is an author with Greenpeace Energydesk. She tweets @laurimyllyvirta.

This article was originally published by Greenpeace Energydesk. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Economic and industrial data released today by the Chinese government’s statistical agency indicates the country’s carbon emissions likely fell by around 3%.

It also shows the contraction of key heavy industry sectors and the continued expansion of renewable energies are driving a wedge between total energy demand and coal use.

According to the data, China’s coal output fell by 3.5% in 2015, thermal power generation by 3%, coal imports by 30%, pig iron output by 4%, coking coal output by 7%, and cement by 5%.

All this suggests that both power sector coal consumption and total coal consumption probably fell by more than 4%. Total oil consumption grew only 1.1% in the first eleven months, gas consumption by 3.7% while cement production (which releases CO2 directly) fell by 4.9%. This indicates a fall of 3-4% in China’s fossil CO₂ emissions – roughly equal to Poland’s total emissions.

This is now China’s second year of declining pollution. As  reported last year, 2014 carbon emissions were down about 0.7% and the country’s coal burn was down some 3%. That was the first fall in China’s emissions since the Asian economic crisis more than 15 years ago.

Key drivers …

The main factors driving China’s declining carbon emissions include:

• Shrinking heavy industry. Nobody knows for sure how much China’s economy grew in 2015, but what seems clear is that heavy industry declined while services and private consumption grew significantly.
• Debt overhang. In response to the global financial crisis, China created the largest credit boom the world has ever seen, which ultimately led to the massive energy overcapacity and rapidly growing debt that are now weighing down on the economy.
• Booming renewable energy generation. China was able to reduce fossil fuel fired power generation by 3% while overall power demand increased 0.5% by adding 30GW of wind power and 17GW of solar capacity – a new world record for any country ever.
• Airpocalypse. The war on pollution continued to impact industry, and it’s reasonable to expected that action will be amplified following the horrendous air pollution episodes Beijing experienced this winter. As reported on Energydesk, the notorious China smog was 10% less intense in 2015 than it was the year before.

China has also acted this year to clamp down on coal mining, closing many smaller mines and banning new ones. in an effort to prevent over-supply. Over 1,000 small mines will be closed and the ban on new mining permits will last for three years.

But the new economic reality is not without challenges: the fight between dirty and clean power for space on the grid has only got worse as coal overcapacity continues to grow. New coal fired power stations are still being built owing to perverse economic incentives.

Meanwhile the debate over whether China’s high polluting industrial sectors would return to growth was essentially settled last year: They won’t. The economic bulls and bears are now divided on whether the service sector and high-end manufacturing can fill the gap left by shrinking state-owned heavy industry sectors, or whether the economy is headed for an outright stagnation.

Though the difference between these two scenarios would have significant consequences for China’s citizens, carbon emissions are likely to fall in either case since they come almost entirely from heavy manufacturing.

China’s 2016 goals – cut over-supply

The key drivers mentioned above will only intensify in 2016 – last year was just the beginning.

A lot of heavy industry companies have continued to operate despite lack of market demand and making losses. Allowing these ‘zombie’ operations to wind down, termed’ supply-side reform’ and ‘overcapacity reduction’ in Chinese political jargon, is the number one economic policy goal for the coming year, and an inevitability in any case.

Similarly, the growth in public and corporate debt continued to far outpace economic growth in 2015 as the government tried to stimulate the economy through credit expansion. This is clearly an unsustainable trend, and as China begins to deleverage its debt – another key policy goal set in the Economic Work Conference in December – energy intensive investment spending will fall further and reduce energy demand.

Basically, China’s CO₂ emissions are still on track to to peak and decline well ahead of the government’s official targets and projections. Another promising sign for the historic Paris climate agreement finalised late last year.

Lauri Myllyvirta is an author with Greenpeace Energydesk. She tweets @laurimyllyvirta.

This article was originally published by Greenpeace Energydesk. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.