Telegraph: New climate deal upsets nations in Kyoto pact

By Alec Russell, in Washington, Charles Clover and David Rennie, in Brussels
(Filed: 29/07/2005)

A new American-led initiative to combat global warming met with a cool reaction yesterday as Europe and environmentalists warned that it risked undermining the Kyoto Protocol.

To the bewilderment and irritation of some of Washington's allies who knew nothing in advance of the pact, America, Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan unveiled a plan yesterday to seek new technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions.


Robert Zoellick: 'We are not detracting from Kyoto'
Robert Zoellick, the US deputy secretary of state, insisted the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate was not a threat to the Kyoto agreement, which sets strict targets for cuts in emissions by 2012.

America and Australia are the only developed nations to have refused to sign up to Kyoto. They say it penalises industrialised nations by not incorporating developing nations, and also that it threatens jobs.

"We are not detracting from Kyoto in any way at all. We are complementing it," Mr Zoellick said, as the plan was announced in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, on the sidelines of an Asian security forum. "Our goal is to complement other treaties with practical solutions to problems," he said.

The new initiative does not set targets for emissions, as desired by Britain at the Gleneagles G8 summit earlier this month. Rather it calls for voluntary unenforceable targets, and also for new technologies from "clean coal" and wind power to a new generation of nuclear fission to reduce pollution and address fears over climate change.

Washington has long been looking for a way to sideline Kyoto and hailed the involvement of China and India, two of the world's major polluters, which have ratified Kyoto but are not subject to the 2012 deadline.

But it met scepticism in Brussels, where a European Commission spokesman expressed concerns about its emphasis on exploring cleaner technologies, rather than efforts to reduce energy consumption.

Leading environmentalists also expressed misgivings. Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society, said: "The science points to the need for a Herculean effort to make massive cuts in the amount of greenhouse gases that we pump into the atmosphere. So, while this encouraging new deal may play a role in this, it will only be part, and not all, of the solution.

"But we have serious concerns that the apparent lack of targets in this deal means that there is no sense of what it is ultimately trying to achieve or the urgency of taking action to combat climate change. And the developed countries involved with this agreement must not be tempted to use it as an excuse to avoid tackling their own emissions."

The plan was hatched in secret over the last year and took British officials by surprise, although this was denied by a spokesman for the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

"We have known about this in general for some time. We welcome any action taken by governments to reduce greenhouse gases in order to combat dangerous climate change," said a Defra spokesman.

John Howard, Australia's prime minister, who is seen in some conservative circles in Washington as President George W Bush's only ideologically consistent ally, called the deal a "historic agreement" and "superior to the Kyoto protocol".

Washington Post: Senators Struggle to Act on Global Warming

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 22, 2005; Page A03

After listening to some of the world's preeminent climate researchers yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators said they saw the need to take quick action on global warming but were struggling to reach consensus on what policy to adopt.

Several Republicans on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said during the two-hour hearing that they would consider adopting mandatory limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases but that they prefer the approach of promoting new technologies that do not contribute to the problem.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said he does not believe there is a simple solution to global warming.

"I don't think the issue is whether we have a major international problem; the question is: How do we solve it?" said the panel's chairman, Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.). "I'm looking for a solution, but I'm not going to join the crowd that thinks it's simple."

Last month, the Senate adopted a nonbinding resolution by a vote of 53 to 44 calling for a "national program of mandatory market-based limits and incentives on greenhouse gases" that would not hurt the U.S. economy and would encourage other polluting nations to follow suit. The Senate defeated a bipartisan bill by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) that sought to establish a mandatory federal cap on heat-trapping emissions, and Domenici said he hoped his committee's climate change hearings would help lawmakers devise an alternative.

The scientists testifying yesterday, including National Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone and Nobel prize-winning chemist Mario Molina, all said the world is warming at a dangerous rate, and that human activity accounts for much of the recent temperature rise.

"Climate change is perhaps the most worrisome global environmental problem confronting human society today," said Molina, a professor at the University of California at San Diego. Molina added that while experts are still uncertain about exactly how global warming will play out in future decades, "not knowing with certainty how the climate system will respond should not be an excuse for inaction."

Several committee Republicans, including some who had questioned climate change predictions in the past, said they agree the world has reached a scientific consensus on global warming.

"I have come to believe, along with many of my colleagues, that there is a substantial human effect on the environment," said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), who has opposed mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and voted against last month's "sense of the Senate" resolution on climate change.

Some GOP senators, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), went further. In an interview, Murkowski said that "there's an emerging consensus we've got to deal" with climate change, adding it would be "tough" to cut greenhouse gases sufficiently through voluntary programs alone.

"I'd rather we don't have to [adopt mandatory limits], but we know what happens when we leave it to our good judgment. Sometimes we don't see the benefits," she said.

Some Republican panel members said they would be more open to the witnesses' call to arms if the scientists would embrace nuclear power, which does not release carbon dioxide as coal-fired power plants do. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) lectured the climatologists from the dais, saying that installing solar panels "might be nice for a desert island, but that's not going to work . . . in America."

Cicerone replied that nuclear power "has tremendous potential. People just want to see it done safely."

It remains unclear how quickly lawmakers would be willing to act on climate change proposals. Domenici said in an interview that he plans to bring in a group of global warming skeptics to testify, and he would prefer requiring that American companies install cleaner technology, rather than setting specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"They're not saying we have to do something tomorrow morning," Domenici said of the scientists.

WSJ: Honda Will Offer More Fuel-Efficient Models for Drivers

July 21, 2005

ASIAN BUSINESS NEWS

By JATHON SAPSFORD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 21, 2005; Page D1

Honda Motor Co. is betting the U.S. car buyer is an environmentalist at heart.

Japan's third-largest car maker -- and the fifth-largest producer in the U.S. -- unveiled a slew of ambitious fuel-efficiency targets and said the environmentally friendly technologies are key to its goal of boosting annual sales by more than 20% over the next three years to four million cars, trucks and vans world-wide.

It's part of a broad effort among auto makers to grab consumers' attention as fuel prices hover near record levels. In one of the most significant indicators of shifting consumer tastes, sales of hybrid vehicles -- which use a combination of gasoline engines and electric motors -- have soared in popularity in recent years. Buyers have to wait months to buy a Toyota Prius hybrid, which gets roughly 60 miles to the gallon in city driving, according to government figures. A number of auto makers, including General Motors, Ford and Nissan, are considering adding smaller, more fuel-efficient cars to their U.S. lineups.


The redesigned Civic concept car

Yesterday, Honda said it planned to sell a version of the Honda Fit -- a tiny car that's a hot seller in Japan -- in the U.S. starting early next year. It also plans to roll out an aggressive redesign of its Civic, which already comes in a hybrid version, in an effort to give the car a sleeker, edgy look. The company also laid out an ambitious plan to sharply improve the fuel efficiency of its conventional engines.

Hybrid technology isn't a slam dunk for consumers. In most cases, the hybrid propulsion system, which can boost the sticker price by thousands of dollars, doesn't save enough in gas consumption over the life of the car to make them economical. Both Toyota and Honda have been trying to get around this barrier by selling hybrids as a performance technology, noting that the electric motor can add to the punch of the conventional combustion engine.

But senior Honda officials understand that not every customer is going to go for that. So Honda is also putting a lot of resources into boosting the efficiency of its conventional gasoline engines, which they say have recorded improved fuel efficiency by 30% over the past decade. Honda says it can still get a lot of environmental bang for each buck invested by making these standard engines more efficient.

The company set a goal of improving fuel efficiency by 11% to 13% over the next three years for the engines it puts in such models as the Accord sedan, the Odyssey minivan or the new Ridgeline light pickup. In its motorcycle division (Honda is the world's biggest motorcycle maker) the company says it plans to improve fuel efficiency by as much as 30%.

"One of the most effective environmental protection efforts we can pursue at the moment is to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines," said Honda President Takeo Fukui, at a news conference in Tokyo.

Honda was the first auto maker to offer a hybrid vehicle, the futuristic Insight, which went on sale in the U.S. in 1999. But more recently, the sales momentum in hybrids has gone to Toyota, which is rolling out a second generation of hybrid vehicles, everything from its own geeky Prius econobox to high-end Lexus sport-utility vehicles such as the RX 400h. May sales of the Prius, at 9,461 cars, did better than such mainstream high-volume rivals as GM's Pontiac G6 and the Chrysler Pacifica.

The challenge for Honda is to regain a reputation for innovation, and to reinvigorate relatively slow sales growth in some areas. Honda makes little secret of its belief that a big chunk of hoped-for growth in coming years will be in the U.S., where rivals such as General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are stumbling as sales of profitable but gas-guzzling SUVs have cooled. Honda's ambitions, outlined by officials in Tokyo as part of a three-year plan, also underscore its effort to get back some of the buzz that's gone to its bigger Japanese rivals in recent weeks -- notably Toyota Motor Corp. which has grabbed attention with environmental technologies.

Fuel efficiency, of course, has long been the trump card of Japan's manufacturers in the global auto race. The renewed push in this area isn't good news for the car makers of Detroit, which are preoccupied with a slew of issues.

GM and Ford are facing thorny problems from weakening finances to rising medical costs for unionized employees and retirees. GM yesterday reported weaker-than-expected second-quarter results1, as its core North American auto operations had a loss of $1.2 billion. Earlier this week, Ford reported a 19% drop in second-quarter profits, stemming in part from a $907 million pretax loss in its North American auto operations. The company said it was considering further reductions in manufacturing capacity.

Honda, by contrast, noted that it began a new automatic-transmission plant in Georgia in May, and is boosting U.S. production of crucial components in Ohio and Alabama. Honda said it would invest roughly $300 million to produce power trains in North America to meet demand.

Honda's plans to boost overall vehicle production and sales to an annual four million vehicles by March, 2008, comes after it sold 3.24 million cars in its most recent year ended in March 2005. That compares with the roughly 8.9 million units in annual sales by General Motors and the 7.4 million for Toyota.

Honda also announced plans to expand annual global motorcycle sales to 16 million bikes by the end of March 2008, up from 10.5 million last fiscal year. Separately, it said it will take another step toward realizing its 20-year quest to become a jet-aircraft maker next week when a small jet it has been developing makes its first public demonstration flight at an air show in Wisconsin.

---- Norihiko Shirouzu in Detroit contributed to this article.

NY Times: Riots in a Village in China as Pollution Protest Heats Up

July 19, 2005

By HOWARD W. FRENCH
XINCHANG, China, July 18 - After three nights of increasingly heavy rioting, the police were taking no chances on Monday, deploying dozens of busloads of officers before dusk and blocking every road leading to the factory.

But the angry residents in this village 180 miles south of Shanghai had learned their lessons, too, they said, having studied reports of riots in towns near and far that have swept rural China in recent months. Sneaking over mountain paths and wading through rice paddies, they made their way to a pharmaceuticals plant, they said, determined to pursue a showdown over the environmental threat they say it poses.

As many as 15,000 people massed here Sunday night and waged a pitched battle with the authorities, overturning police cars and throwing stones for hours, undeterred by thick clouds of tear gas. Fewer people may have turned out Monday evening under rainy skies, but residents of this factory town in the wealthy Zhejiang Province vow they will keep demonstrating until they have forced the 10-year-old plant to relocate.

"This is the only way to solve problems like ours," said a 22-year-old villager whose house sits less than 100 yards from the smashed gates of the factory, where the police were massed. "If you go to see the mayor or some city official, they just take your money and do nothing."

The riots in Xinchang are a part of a rising tide of discontent in China, with the number of mass protests like these skyrocketing to 74,000 incidents last year from about 10,000 a decade earlier, according to government figures. The details have varied from incident to incident, but the recent protests all share a common foundation of accumulated anger over the failure of China's political system to respond to legitimate grievances and defiance of the local authorities, who are often seen as corrupt.

A sign of the leadership's growing concern over the increasing turbulence can be seen in a proliferation of high-level statements about the demonstrations.

In a nationally televised news conference this month, Li Jingtian, deputy director of the Communist Party's organization bureau, complained that "with regard to our grassroots cadres, some of them are probably less competent, and they are not able to dissipate these conflicts or problems."

In another widely remarked statement, Chen Xiwen, an economics vice minister who oversees agricultural affairs, saluted the Internet's role in allowing the central government authorities to learn of unrest more quickly and praised demonstrating farmers for "knowing how to protect their rights."

The people of Xinchang were reluctant to speak openly about the uprising, since they would be subject to immediate arrest if they were identified. But from conversations with numerous residents, many of whom took part in the protests, it was possible to put together a detailed picture of the events that unfolded.

In Xinchang, as with many of the recent protests, the initial spark involved claims of serious environmental degradation. An explosion at the Jingxin Pharmaceutical Company this month in a vessel containing deadly chemicals reportedly killed one worker, and previous leakages contaminated the water supply for miles downstream, said villagers and one chemical plant worker who was injured in the accident.

Villagers say they appointed a small group of representatives to present demands for compensation, including free health examinations and medical care for people who live near the plants, which produces a strain of antibiotics called quinolones.

When they sent a group on July 4 to demand an audience with factory officials, they say, security guards beat the representatives.

The next day, the villagers returned in larger numbers and managed to grab a security officer, whom they acknowledge beating. In the meantime, as word spread of the beating of the village representatives and of the worker's death in the explosion, villagers raised the stakes, demanding the outright closing of the factory, which they had complained about for years.

"Our fields won't produce grain anymore," said a 46-year-old woman who lives near the plant. "We don't dare to eat food grown from anywhere near here."

Her husband, a former machine operator, said he had to quit working recently because of persistent weakness and nausea. When local officials posted a notice saying they would reopen the plant a few days after the fatal explosion there, he had been one of the first demonstrators to arrive on the scene, charging the gates and bursting into the factory with a small crowd of fellow protesters.

"They are making poisonous chemicals for foreigners that the foreigners don't dare produce in their own countries," the man said. Explaining why he had been willing to rush into the plant, despite signs warning of toxic chemicals all about, he said, "It is better to die now, forcing them out, than to die of a slow suicide."

Local officials in Xinchang were able to buy some time in the conflict by temporarily suspending operations at the plant, sending teams door to door in many of the neighborhoods surrounding the factory to urge residents not to harbor troublemakers or outsiders and promising to consider the villagers' grievances carefully.

Tensions spiked again, though, on Thursday when the city posted a notice saying production would resume at the plant the next day. It warned that an explosion could take place inside the factory unless the chemical processes already begun were allowed to run for another week.

Sensing a ruse, the villagers refused, demanding a guarantee in the form of a security deposit of more than $2 million to allow the plant to start up again temporarily. "We don't trust them," said a man who lives near the plant. "They have told us lies many times before and have never addressed our problems."

The next day and each day since, the villagers have massed by the thousands outside the factory's gates, smashing the company's sign, wrecking a guard post and smashing windows with stones. The factory, meanwhile, has remained closed.

In many of China's other recent riots, word has spread fast among organizers and protesters by way of mobile phone messages, allowing crowds to mass quickly and helping demonstrators to coordinate tactics and slogans.

In Xinchang, however, residents say new technology, like the cellphone, has played little part. Instead, many residents say they were moved to action after years of unhappiness about industrial pollution by copies of newspaper headlines from Dongyang. That city, a mere 50 miles away, was the scene this spring of one of China's biggest riots, in which more than 10,000 residents routed the police in a riot over pollution from a pesticide factory.

Despite tight controls on news coverage of the incident, the riot in Dongyang, where the chemical factory remains closed months later, has firmly entered Chinese folklore as proof that determined citizens acting en masse can force the authorities to reverse course and address their needs.

"As for the Dongyang riot, everyone knows about it," a man in his 20's exulted. "Six policemen were killed, and the chief had the tendons in his arms and legs severed. Perhaps they went too far, but we must be treated as human beings."

NY Times: Court Says E.P.A. Can Limit Its Regulation of Emissions

Court Says E.P.A. Can Limit Its Regulation of Emissions
July 16, 2005

By ANTHONY DePALMA
A federal appeals court rejected on Friday an effort by a dozen states and cities, along with environmental groups, to have the Bush administration regulate greenhouse gases that spill out of the tailpipes of new cars and trucks.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had the administrative discretion to decide, in 2003, not to order reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles, as the states sought.

The decision - the most authoritative court ruling on the issue so far - lessens the likelihood that there will be any national programs to control greenhouse gas emissions anytime soon. However, Judge A. Raymond Randolph, writing for the panel, and Judge David B. Sentelle, who disagreed with Judge Randolph on some of the issues in the case, did not directly address the agency's contention that it had not been given authority under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.

That omission led environmental groups to claim that the decision leaves the door open for the agency to regulate greenhouse gases in the future, if it chooses to do so.

The ruling appears to leave unchecked the authority of some states, such as California and New York, to continue their programs to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles or power plants.

But it was clearly a setback for the states that had sought federal involvement in controlling greenhouse gases.

James R. Milkey, chief of the environmental protection division in the Massachusetts attorney general's office, called the ruling "a deeply fractured set of opinions" that was both disappointing and heartening.

"The two judges in the majority just assumed that E.P.A. had the authority to regulate emissions without dealing directly with the question," Mr. Milkey said.

Only Judge David S. Tatel, who wrote a pointed dissenting opinion, touched the central issue, Mr. Milkey said, and he "firmly rejected each and every argument that E.P.A. made trying to hide behind the claim that it lacked authority."

Mr. Milkey said the strong dissent could strengthen the case for a rehearing before the full 11-member Court of Appeals. The case could also be taken to the Supreme Court.

Eryn Witcher, the press secretary for the Environmental Protection Agency, called the court decision a welcome win.

"We are pleased with this ruling and glad the court supported our decision," Ms. Witcher said. She said voluntary programs were better ways to reduce carbon and greenhouse gases than "mandatory regulations and litigation that don't promote economic growth."

The agency was joined in the case by the attorneys general of 11 states that oppose carbon dioxide regulation and a coalition of trade groups, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Because of the fractured decision, the case did not turn out to be quite the showdown over global warming that was expected. Neither did it settle the question about how much authority the federal agency has to take action on emissions that some believe contribute to the heating of the earth, but that others do not think has any direct relation to climate change on such a large scale.

The emissions case dates to 1999, when several states and environmental groups formally petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons in new motor vehicles to control greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2003, the federal agency rejected the petition, arguing that it lacked the statutory authority to act.

Several states, led by Massachusetts, argued in federal court that the agency's decision had been based on the conclusion that the connection between greenhouses gas emissions and global warming "cannot be unequivocally established," which was the finding of a report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Massachusetts was joined by California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, along with the cities of Baltimore, New York and Washington, D.C. and American Samoa.

The appeals court ruled that the agency's decision did not rest "entirely on scientific uncertainty," but was a justifiable "policy judgment."

James T. B. Tripp, general counsel for the group Environmental Defense, which participated in the case on the side of the plaintiff states, said that the majority opinion does not deal expressly with the question of the agency's statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. "But it implicitly says the agency may have the discretionary authority to do so," Mr. Tripp said.

The question of the government's authority was handled forthrightly in the 38-page dissent of Judge Tatel, who rejected most of the arguments the agency made to defend its decision not to regulate the gases.

Judge Tatel said he had "grave difficulty" seeing how the agency had not concluded that global warming was a serious threat to public health. And in his most strongly worded conclusion, Judge Tatel said the Environmental Protection Agency "has authority - indeed the obligation" to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

NY Times: Slowly, the Shared Car Is Making Inroads in Europe

July 14, 2005
Slowly, the Shared Car Is Making Inroads in Europe

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
International Herald Tribune

AMSTERDAM - When Mariane Polfliet discovered she had an emergency meeting in a hard to reach suburb of Amsterdam recently, there was no need for panic: within minutes, she had used her computer-coded key to drive away in one of the hundreds of shared cars that are now scattered around the quaint canals of this city's center.

There was something incongruous about the package: Ms. Polfliet, dressed for a Mercedes in an elegant tan suit with her lawyerly leather briefcase, driving the small bright red Peugeot with neon green wheels and "Greenwheels" stenciled amid swirls on the door.

But for thousands of people in the Netherlands, and hundreds of thousands worldwide, car-sharing groups like Greenwheels have filled the gap between private car ownership and public transportation. For cities where it has taken hold, the concept is helping to relieve traffic and reduce pollution, studies have found.

"Some lawyers don't want to visit clients in a car like this, but I don't care, because this idea has changed my life," said Ms. Polfliet, who uses Greenwheels instead of owning a private car. With it, she takes her boyfriend to hockey practice, buys wine in bulk for parties, shops at Ikea.

Although car sharing has been a mythic, green concept for decades, it has only become a larger-scale reality in the past few years - and then only in a handful of places, like Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, where it has been commercialized by a small number of companies. Over all, far more car-sharing ventures have failed than succeeded in the past 15 years, or have remained too tiny to have a major impact. Still, as urban centers face ever more serious traffic snarls and new technology makes car sharing simpler, dozens of cities in Europe, North America, and Asia - from Singapore to Turin to Minneapolis - are re-exploring the idea.

In January, representatives from a number of cities met in Brussels at a conference organized by a European Union initiative to promote car sharing. "We see a big potential for European cities," the report concluded, estimating that at least 500,000 private vehicles could be replaced in Europe by car sharing.

But the debate continues over whether car sharing is a boutique industry that works well in slightly offbeat places, like Amsterdam, or whether it can become an essential part of urban transportation, like buses and taxis. "I think it's going to be another 10 years before it's going to have a really big impact generally," said Dave Brook, an independent car consultant in the United States. "But we can say now that it's definitely a viable niche, and it's going to be a damn big niche as well."

Private companies, including some giants of the car industry like Hertz and Shell, have begun investing in or operating commercial car sharing to a limited extent. About 300,000 people are involved in car sharing worldwide, with the majority in Europe, according to Susan Shaheen, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Mobility, the largest single company, with locations all over Switzerland, has 60,000 members and 2,400 cars. In the United States, there are just over 1,000 shared cars in all.

Companies in the United States, like Zipcar, often require drivers to book cars in advance, not unlike renting a car. Here, much of the use is more spontaneous, with customers using the Internet to book one of the many cars in their neighborhoods.

Car sharing logic is simple: Owning a car is both expensive and impractical in many cities. Here in Amsterdam, city center parking permits take six years to obtain, while bicycles ply the narrow streets and bridges with enviable ease.

But what happens when a child misses a school bus? Or someone needs to load up on groceries, or take a guest to the airport? With Greenwheels, members pay as little as 5 euros a month, a little over $6, in base fees, then substantially more for mileage or hourly rates, to tackle these tasks in a car.

"We were haunted by the idea that you could use technology to make this idea into a large scale, professional operation that would be very convenient for customers," said Jan Borghuis, co-founder of Greenwheels - dressed in the de facto company uniform of shorts, sandals and a T-shirt, in the company's ramshackle Rotterdam office surrounded by bicycle tires rather than auto parts. "We know it would have a good effect on the environment."

The actual environmental impact is less than straightforward, although researchers say it relieves traffic congestion and pollution to some degree by reducing car ownership. Studies suggest that one shared car replaces 4 to 10 private cars, as people sell their old vehicles, Ms. Shaheen said. The result is a 30 to 45 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled for each new customer.

"On the whole, this is very good for the environment," said Rens Meijkamp, a Dutch researcher, who found that nearly 50 percent of Greenwheels clients used the service as a replacement for either a first or second private car.

On the other hand, there are customers who would otherwise take the bus, meaning that the concept inspires some additional driving.

But the industry is still trying to define itself - not yet mature even in Europe and "still in its adolescence" in the United States, Mr. Brook said. In some places, companies are developing partnerships with state railroads or supermarkets to place cars outside of them. In others, cities have given shared cars the right to drive in bus lanes. "

"I think the demand will develop as far as the supply will become more attractive, simple, and closer to each inhabitant," said J. B. Schmider, manager of the fledgling French Autopartage Network, which to date has only 2,500 members nationwide.

Car rental companies like their fleets to be rented out all the time. But car-sharing companies have a slightly different take on the financial equation. By having a huge number of members, and an excess capacity of cars in the right places, they hope to be able to provide a nearby car within minutes.

On a recent Friday, there was a rare public transportation strike in the Netherlands. It was, Mr. Borghuis said, "our moment of truth," since most Greenwheels customers take trains to work. "In most places, there were cars available when people needed them," he said. "That made us happy."


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

NY Times: A City's Traffic Plans Are Snarled by China's Car Culture

July 12, 2005
A City's Traffic Plans Are Snarled by China's Car Culture

By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI, July 9 - When officials drew up the blueprints for the redesign of this city in the early 1980's, nary a skyscraper punctuated the low-slung horizon, whose buildings mostly dated from the decades of Western control early in the last century.

The hugely ambitious plans called for Shanghai to be built anew. And among the top priorities in a city previously dominated by bicycles was avoiding the most common plagues of the automobile age - unmanageable traffic and unbearable pollution.

To that end, enormous sums were spent on spectacular bridges, elevated highways and a brand-new subway system. But today, glance out the window of one of this city's 3,000 high-rises around 6 p.m., when snarling masses of horn-honking cars tend to congeal in gridlock, and it is hard to escape the impression that Shanghai, at least for now, is losing its bet.

As people in this richest of Chinese cities have grown more and more affluent, they have displayed an American-style passion for the automobile. But for Shanghai, as for much of China, getting rich and growing attached to cars have increasingly gone hand in hand, and have produced side effects familiar in cities that have long been addicted to automobiles - from filthy air and stressful, marathon commutes to sharply rising oil consumption.

China accounts for about 12 percent of the world's energy demand, but its consumption is growing at more than four times the global rate, sending Chinese oil company executives on an increasingly frantic search for overseas supplies. The country's top environmental officials have warned of ecological and economic doom if China continues to follow this pattern. But in cities like Shanghai, where automobiles account for 70 percent to 80 percent of air pollution, nothing seems capable of stopping, or even slowing, the rapid rise of a car culture.

This is not for lack of trying. In one attempt to slow the growth of automobile traffic, the city has raised the fees for car registrations every year since 2000, doubling them over that time to about $4,600 per vehicle - more than twice the city's per capita income. Many drivers illegally register their cars in other cities, where the fees are much lower, and the result is a never-ending cat-and-mouse game with the traffic police.

The traffic efforts have been coupled with a major expansion of the public transportation system, which comprises gleaming new subways and the world's fastest train, a magnetic levitation vehicle that zips to the airport in under 10 minutes.

The steep growth in automobile traffic here, however, seems to mock the city's efforts. The original blueprints for a major expansion of Shanghai's road network, drawn up two decades ago, predicted that Shanghai would pass the threshold of two million cars in 2020. In fact, that figure was reached last November.

"The estimates we made 20 years ago have been proven wrong," said Li Junhao, chief engineer of the city's Urban Planning Administration Bureau, in something of an understatement. "The development of Shanghai has been beyond our imagination."

Even interim traffic estimates here have fallen far short. Two years ago, the city government rushed orders for the construction of a new, elevated loop expressway for central Shanghai, because other elevated expressways were already saturated at peak hours. "Just one year after some roads were completed, they reached vehicle flow volumes that were forecast for 15 to 20 years from now," said Yang Dongyuan, a professor at the School of Transportation Engineering and vice president of Tongji University.

Meanwhile, the city is expanding its subway grid well beyond the 310 miles of track first planned. Two new lines are being added to the original 15, along with another 192 miles of track. Even so, the subway system, gleaming and clean though it is, is one area where traffic has failed to meet projections, with less than half the expected ridership on some lines. The reason, experts say, is that there are not enough trains, resulting in overcrowding, which further encourages people to ride in cars.

To be sure, Shanghai's failure to master the challenge of the automobile reflects a mixture of forces, both economic and cultural. Foremost is the city's economic performance, which has been fast even by Chinese standards, and has outstripped even the most optimistic projections.

Add to this a flourishing consumer culture that equates car ownership, however costly, with personal freedom, prestige and success.

In this regard, Yu Qiang, a 31-year-old salesman, is a model citizen of sorts. Mr. Yu spent more than $20,000 last year to buy his first car, a Chinese-made Buick, so that he could drive to work each morning instead of relying on public transportation.

Because of heavy traffic, the seven-mile commute usually takes a full hour. It includes dropping his 5-year-old son off at kindergarten and his wife, who teaches, at her school.

"A new subway line will be completed to my neighborhood later this year, and I'm hoping many other people will ride it so that the traffic will get better," Mr. Yu said. "I'll keep driving my car, though. It's more comfortable because I can listen to music, use the air-conditioner, and it's not crowded."

Mr. Yu then made a comment that sounded like a city planner's nightmare and a car salesman's dream. "In China everybody wants to have a car, and I'm just one of them," he said. "We think of it as changing our lives." As for the traffic implications, he added, smiling, "The government has a lot to do to improve the traffic, and I believe they will do it."

Salon: Is there common ground "beyond Kyoto"?

Is there common ground "beyond Kyoto"?

We should have known better than to hope George W. Bush had experienced a true change of heart on climate change. His words leading up to the G-8 summit gave cause for optimism that the U.S. was ready to agree to some form of mandatory steps in curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. That foolish optimism was dispelled Friday when G-8 leaders announced their agreement, which contains a lot of pretty rhetoric but zero in the way of concrete action.
In an appearance earlier this week with the Danish prime minister, Bush asked those in attendance to prick up their ears. "Listen," he said, "I recognize that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem."

And a few minutes later: "Listen, the United States, for national security reasons and economic security reasons, needs to diversify away from fossil fuels ... There's no doubt in my mind that we'll be driving a different kind of automobile within a reasonable period of time -- one powered by hydrogen."

Bush and his advisors had developed a new set of talking points. Because the Kyoto Protocol, which called for mandatory reductions in greenhouse emissions for developed nations, would have "wrecked" the U.S. economy, in Bush's words, it was time to move into "the post-Kyoto era," where developing but powerful nations like China and India will be made to participate. ("What we're trying to do is really move beyond Kyoto," Stephen Hadley, Bush's National Security Advisor, told reporters.)

The president can't be faulted for worrying about jobs and the economy, and he has a point with his other main objection to the Kyoto accord, that it doesn't include nations like China, giving non-Kyoto nations an economic advantage over developed nations. But to what extent are these legitimate concerns and not excuses, rationalizations meant to obscure an intractable position?

Both Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the point of the summit was to find common ground between the U.S. and the rest of the G-8 nations. But to Bush, "common ground" generally tends to mean, "where I'm standing." So in advance of the conference, administration officials set about weakening the language of the accord, downplaying the certainty that climate change is occurring and the severity of its environmental impacts.

In spite of the disappointing result, Blair should be credited for making climate change a focus of the summit (though Thursday's terror bombings wrenched much of that focus away) and for initiating a dialogue, which will continue at a meeting of industrialized nations set for Nov. 1. Bush was already on the record as saying climate change was a threat, but you had to look hard to find it behind the administration's systematic efforts to suppress scientific data on global warming. By establishing climate change as a thrust of the G-8 conference, Blair forced the president to acknowledge the threat of global warming on the largest possible stage. Perhaps his Republican supporters took their fingers out of their ears long enough to hear it. We'll find out when the Kyoto accord expires in 2012.

-- Aaron Kinney

SF Chronicle: The good life means more greenhouse gas

The good life means more greenhouse gas
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Pi Heyang gingerly closed the door of his first car-to-be. Then, he ran his hand slowly along the shiny hood, touching the Chinese-made Tianjin Weizi sedan as delicately as if it were made of gossamer.

"This will change our lives," the Beijing bus driver said solemnly while his wife and young son stood at his side in the dealer's showroom.

Several miles away through Beijing's smoggy streets, an exhibition hall was jammed with thousands of people perusing booths with displays for new homes in suburban subdivisions. Videos played, dancers gyrated, and neon signs in English touted developments with names such as "Rich Garden" and "Canal Side Upper Strata Life."

"We want space, greenery, freedom," said Han Yu, a mobile phone salesman, after he and his wife signed papers to buy a three-bedroom condominium on Beijing's eastern outskirts for $105,000. "This is it."

This is the new Chinese Dream: cars and suburbs. Like the American counterpart, it is good news for many people -- but perhaps bad news for Planet Earth. The same economic boom that is catapulting millions of Chinese each year into the middle class has made their country the world's fastest- growing source of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

As China's thirst for fuel helps push world oil prices to record highs, the country is emerging as a key factor in the debate over climate change -- as well as a wild card that could determine the health of the world's economy.

Chinese leaders acknowledge global warming as a serious problem, and they have begun a concerted campaign to cut the country's greenhouse gas output, which is largely driven by energy consumption. The government is spending billions of dollars -- nobody knows exactly how much -- to increase energy conservation, shut fume-belching factories and reduce power plant emissions. At the same time, however, the resulting efficiency improvements have been outpaced by unrelenting growth in automobile use, power generation and industrial activity.

Although the Chinese government does not publish data about carbon emissions, most foreign analysts estimate that the country's carbon dioxide emission levels are now second only to the United States worldwide and are growing by anywhere from 5 to 10 percent a year, the fastest increase of any major nation. China is expected to overtake the United States for the No. 1 spot by 2025, with its share of total world greenhouse-gas output rising from 12 to 20 percent during the period.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, China and other developing nations are exempted from the mandatory cuts in emissions of global-warming gases that rich nations must obey. Chinese officials say such limits would prevent them from rising from poverty, and they point out that rich industrialized nations are responsible for the vast majority of global-warming emissions.

The Bush administration says China's exemption is unfair, and it is one reason that President Bush withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. Global warming is a top agenda item at the summit of the Group of Eight richest industrialized nations opening today in Scotland. The other seven members of the G-8 have promised to adhere to the Kyoto treaty.

Administration supporters say China's economic boom is fueled by profligate waste. China uses three times more energy per dollar of its gross domestic product than the global average and 4.7 times more than the United States, according to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Energy.

But Beijing officials defend the government's record.

"China wants to do its part against global warming, and we have taken many actions," said Zhou Dadi, director general of the Energy Research Institute, the central government's main policy agency on the subject. He cited several key steps in recent years, including these:

-- A new law was approved in February to support the adoption of renewable energy sources such as wind and small-scale hydroelectric plants.

-- Widespread energy-saving standards have been enacted for household appliances.

-- Auto emissions standards will be stiffened by 2007 to a level tougher than current U.S. rules.

-- Construction has started on nine high-speed passenger railway lines --

the nation's first -- to connect major cities.

Yet Zhou admitted that these moves were counteracted by broader economic forces.

"In the media there are lots of ads trying to convince people to adopt some kind of American life, a fancy car, a very big house," he said. "This is what everyone wants now. It is part of development; it is a historical process. Energy efficiency is a function of this."

Because of the nation's red-hot economic growth, which is averaging about 9 percent annually, even working-class Chinese such as Pi, the bus driver, are able to buy a car. Pi said he and his wife, Feng Xiaoe, an accountant, had saved for years, and with some help from his brother and parents, they were able to pay the new car's entire $9,000 sticker price.

"We can go out of the city on weekends," he said, smiling. "We can go fishing, go fly kites."

Bare-bones models are even more accessible to average wage-earners. A Geely sedan with no air conditioning or radio and with a one-liter engine sells for about $3,600. Government officials say they hope that eventually every Chinese family will own a car -- a goal that is championed by China's powerful domestic auto industry.

As a result, the broad freeways that have been built recently in Beijing and other cities are often gridlocked until late at night. The number of cars in the capital alone has doubled in the past five years to 2 million, and China's auto sales are expected to grow 17 percent this year, after 15 percent growth in 2004 and 37 percent in 2003. There still is lots of room for growth because car ownership is estimated at only 12 million -- less than one per 100 people, a tiny fraction of the U.S. rate of 74 per 100.

Bicycles, once the main mode of transportation, now are forbidden on many principal avenues in big cities. Bicycle lanes and sidewalks have been sacrificed in many places to allow more road space for autos.

Cities nationwide have spun off suburbs as municipal governments sell undeveloped rural land, evict tenant farmers and foster construction of suburban housing developments, golf courses and shopping malls. In the past few years, the ever-familiar signs praising the ruling Communist Party have been replaced by slick billboards hawking real estate -- "Grand Luxury!" "Country Mansion Living!" "Bucolic Repose!"

Many international analysts say this new emphasis on consumption is addicting China to high energy use.

"The world's front line for sustainable development is not in the Amazon jungle. The front line is in cities," said Nicholas You, the chief of strategic planning for Habitat, the U.N. housing agency, who recently completed a study of 10 mid-size Chinese cities.

Chinese urban sprawl, You said, is more carefully planned and less energy- intensive than the anarchic, uncontrolled explosions of cities such as Nairobi, Kenya, or Lagos, Nigeria. But he said China's unparalleled size, with more than one-fifth of the world's population, made even small mistakes gargantuan.

"It's obvious that if China continues urbanizing for the next 20 to 30 years, with another 300 million people moving into the cities and with suburbs being built everywhere, it will cause irreversible changes in energy consumption patterns," You said.

Nationwide, energy use is growing about 15 percent annually, and local governments are building scores of coal-fired power plants to try to stave off the blackouts that have plagued cities in recent summers. The central government predicts that there will be a 5 percent gap between electricity production and consumption nationwide this summer, producing more blackouts and brownouts.

China obtains 67 percent of its electricity from coal, and with an estimated 500 years of reserves at current production levels, it has little economic incentive to use alternative fuels.

Nor is there much public awareness of global warming or the need to switch to cleaner energy sources, say leaders of China's tiny environmentalist movement, much of which is subsidized by foreign groups.

"Knowledge of renewable energy is still very low," said Yu Jie, an energy policy analyst for Greenpeace in Beijing. "This is a problem."

But the government's highest circles include many officials who see energy waste and pollution as a severe long-term threat to China's economy and public health. These leaders pushed the new renewable-energy law into fruition in February, an achievement that many foreign analysts call unprecedented for a developing nation.

The law requires power-grid operators to buy electricity from producers of wind, solar, geothermal and small- and medium-scale hydro energy, and will offer financial incentives such as a national fund to foster renewable energy development. It sets the goal of raising renewable energy's share of national consumption from the current level of 3 to 10 percent by 2020. But construction and operation of renewable energy technologies is much more expensive than for conventional coal, oil and gas, and the cost of this switch is estimated at $80 billion.

Industrial lobbies are fighting hard to water down the law's all- important implementation regulations, scheduled to be announced in November. Among the most controversial issues is whether grid operators will be forced to pay an artificially high price to renewable energy producers -- as is the case in Germany, which has become the world's leader in renewable energy since it mandated such built-in subsidies in 2001.

China's environmentalists say the devil is in the details.

"It all depends on how ambitious the central government is," said Yu, the Greenpeace analyst. If pricing decisions are left in the hands of local authorities, she said, the implementation may be gutted by provincially owned utility companies, known as the "electrical tigers."

As part of its drive to add nonpolluting power sources, the government also is starting the world's largest nuclear energy construction program since the 1970s. As many as 40 new nuclear plants are scheduled over the next 15 years, supplementing the country's nine existing plants, to create a capacity of 40,000 gigawatts. This campaign may become partly financed by the Bush administration -- the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a bid by Westinghouse Corp. to construct four of the reactors, and the U.S. Export- Import bank has approved $5 billion in loan guarantees. Westinghouse's main competing bidder is a French-German consortium.

Last week, however, amid growing anti-China sentiment in Congress, the House voted 313-114 to block the Westinghouse financing. The prospects for similar legislation in the Senate are uncertain.

Even with the new expansion program, nuclear energy will contribute only 4 percent of China's power supply by 2020, up from 2.3 percent now. In contrast, nuclear plants provide 20 percent of electricity in the United States and 35 percent in Europe.

But the main weakness of China's campaign for energy efficiency and emissions reduction may be the government's inability to enforce its own edicts.

For example, the energy conservation campaign is being roundly ignored in Beijing and other major cities. Lights in many commercial buildings are on all night, and even structures under construction are often brightly lit from top to bottom as if decked out for a festival.

In December, the State Environmental Protection Agency gained headlines nationwide by shutting 32 new coal power plants that had been built by local governments despite violating the federal agency's air emissions standards. Chinese and foreign environmentalists viewed the move as a sign that the country was finally getting serious about clean-air regulations.

Yet the shutdowns had little impact. All the power plants simply paid fines of 200,000 yuan (about $24,000), the maximum that the federal government could levy, and restarted operations within a few months -- in most cases without any attempt to comply with the federal rules. "We have a saying that if you obey the law, you will have a higher cost, but if you violate it, your cost will be lower," said Ren Haiping, a policy researcher for the environmental agency.

He noted that the agency's officials outside Beijing were under the direct control of provincial and city officials rather than the agency's own headquarters. "If our officials in a province shut down a power plant, for example, they can be fired by the local mayor," said Ren. "It is very sad. We do the best we can, but it is not much.".



* * * * *
DATA

Fueling China's boom

The booming economy and the adoption of modern consumer lifestyles are expected to cause China to overtake the United States as the world's top source of global warming gases by 2025.

No.2 and rising fast

China's carbon dioxide emissions were second only to those of the United
States in 2002.

United States 5.7 Billion metric tons of carbon dioxide
China 3.6
Russia 1.5
Japan 1.2
India 1.0
Germany 0.8
Canada 0.6
United Kingdom 0.6
South Korea 0.5
Italy 0.4
Australia 0.4
France 0.4

Note: Data include carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel energy
consumption and natural gas venting and flaring.

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.

The Guardian: The Giant Wakes

The giant wakes

The Chinese climate is paying the price for economic growth. Jonathan Watts reports on one man's mission to take on the polluters

Thursday June 30, 2005
The Guardian

There are probably very few people outside China who have heard of Pan Yue, but if the planet is to have any chance of avoiding disastrous levels of global warming this is a name that environmentalists should get to know very quickly.
Pan is the deputy director of the state environmental protection agency in China, the world's second largest producer of greenhouse gases. And though his country - as a developing nation - is not obliged by the Kyoto Protocol to cut emissions, he and his fellow underdogs are fighting a campaign to cut wasteful power consumption and increase the use of renewable energy.


They appear hopelessly outnumbered. Inside the government, the upper hand is held by proponents of rapid economic development, who point out that the past 25 years of spectacular growth have lifted 400 million people out of poverty.
These industrial lobbyists want more of the same, but Pan has taken a big risk to declare that China - and the world - simply cannot sustain business as usual.

Breaking with the usually secretive traditions of Beijing's political world, he has used the media and non-governmental organisations, such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, to take on power companies and local polluters.

"Environmental crisis is no longer a risk we predict for our children, it is a problem that our generation must face. It is going to hit us in 15 years, not 50," he told the Guardian.

Pan is certainly not the only pro-environment voice in China, but his is certainly the loudest. In interview after interview with domestic and foreign media, the former journalist has tried to make up for a lack of political clout with an appeal to a still nascent civic society.

"My agency has always gone against the grain," he told Der Spiegel. "In the process, there have always been conflicts with the powerful lobbyist groups and strong local governments. But the people, the media and science are behind us. In fact, the pressure is a motivator for me. Nobody is going to push me off my current course."

Thirst for resources

There is no shortage of evidence to support his assertion that China must change. Inevitably, the world's fastest growing and most populous nation is also one of the planet's biggest environmental villains, particularly with regard to climate change. With a sharp increase in ownership of cars, air conditioners, computers - in fact, just about anything - the country has moved in the past decade from being a net exporter of oil to being the world's second biggest consumer, after the US. Add to this a huge reliance on coal, which accounts for about 70% of the country's energy needs, and it is no surprise that China is also the second biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Between 1990 and 2002, China's CO2 emissions rose 33% to 3.05bn tons. By comparison India - a developing nation with a similar sized population - emitted 1.01bn. The US, however, with just a quarter of the people, belched out 5.6bn tons.

As far as climate change is concerned, the problem with China is that its economy is only just starting to warm up. With GDP expected to quadruple by 2030, its energy related emissions are projected to at least double - possibly even triple - in the same period, even as the developed world is supposed to rein back outputs. For George Bush, this is a "fatal flaw" of the Kyoto protocol. It is certainly a huge obstacle to achieving the EU goal of restricting the rise in temperatures to two degrees by 2050.

China's environmentalists need outside help - a lot of it - if they are to tackle this problem. But, as Pan Yue points out, there are lots of reasons why the government should also cooperate.

"The 1990s was the warmest decade in the past 100 years for China," he notes. "Since 1950, there has been a gradual reduction in precipitation nationwide. Since 1960, the volume of our six main rivers has steadily declined. Since the 1980s, our northern provinces has suffered from intermittent droughts and flash floods. On the coast, sea levels are rising. And inland, our vegetation is moving to a higher latitude. China has been very much affected by climate change."

Scientists and the media are paying increasing attention to such problems. Yao Tandong, a professor of glaciology at the China Academy of Science, worked unobtrusively for more than 20 years in the Himalayas, but last year he caused a sensation by declaring that two-thirds of China's high altitude icefields - which account for 15% of the planet's ice - would melt by 2050 if current trends continued.

Environmental groups say global warming is also raising the risk of water shortages in already drought-stricken northern cities such as Beijing, as well as impacting crop yields and health. Malarial mosquitos are expected to move north, and heat-related deaths in Shanghai are predicted to rise between 3.6 and 7.1 times the current rate.

Possible solutions

"China has to address this issue seriously and consider long-term action," says Hillary Cox of the World Wildlife Fund. "A half-hearted approach won't be enough for the world to avoid a dangerous level of climate change."

For most government officials, including Pan Yue, the problem is seen through the prism of power shortages rather than global warming. This need not matter. To rein back waste, the government has shut down almost 100,000 inefficient plants. This year, China enacted the country's first renewable energy law, which theoretically forces utilities to buy energy from wind farms, nuclear plants and generators using solar and tidal power.

As with all of the central government's fine-sounding policies, there are huge problems of implementation at a local level, where officials know they are judged on the basis of economic growth rates. One consequence of this is the failure of an energy efficiency law enacted in 1998. According to Pan, China uses seven times more resources than Japan to produce goods worth $10,000 (£5,500) and nearly three times more than India. This means that even when Beijing takes a conservationist stance domestically, its environmental problems are simply exported elsewhere. For example, China has belatedly started to protect its forests - and to build a "great green wall" of woodland in the north - but its demand for timber is still growing, which had led to dramatic increases in illegal logging in Russia, Burma and Indonesia.

To address such problems, Pan has proposed the introduction of a green GDP, which would factor environmental costs into economic measurements. Studies on this have begun in 10 provinces and even though it is still far away from becoming national policy, NGOs have given Pan high marks for getting such issues on the political agenda.

"Pan Yue is a special figure inside the government," said Howard Liu, executive director of Greenpeace China. "Most officials keep a low profile, but Pan has strong opinions on China's development. It is very clear to me that he is trying to make a difference. And for the moment at least, the top leaders are giving him the space to express his opinions in public."