China shows every sign of changing its high-carbon ways, if the west accepts responsibility for its past

Protest over the closure of the Vestas plant in Britain contrasts with China's commitment to a low-carbon future

Isabel Hilton
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 July 2009 18.03 BST
This week, Vestas, one of the world's biggest manufacturers of wind turbines, went to court to try to take possession of its Isle of Wight offices after it announced closure of its factory there because of lack of demand in Britain. In the same week, Greenpeace reported that China's big power companies emit as much CO2 in a year as the whole of the UK.
What conclusions should we draw from these two events? The least useful response is the clichéd rhetorical question: "Why should I bother to change my light bulbs if China is building coal-fired power stations?" The impact of changing the light bulbs in any given household may be puny, but it saves money and it makes an easy, if small contribution to cutting emissions. Even with every light bulb changed, the average UK citizen still emits five times — and average US citizen 10 times — as much carbon as the average Chinese citizen. Changing the light bulbs is just the beginning.
China's overall carbon numbers look big because, as Charles de Gaulle remarked, "China is a very big country and a lot of people live there." China has one-fifth of the world's population but it is only in the last couple of years that China's global emissions have overtaken those of the US, a country with a fifth of China's population and the resources and the technology to take the lead in cutting emissions. Historically, the developed world put most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Between 1850 and 2005, 27% of the carbon emitted came from the US, Russia and China accounted for 8% each, Germany 7%, the UK 6%, Japan 4% and India 2%.
China's emissions, on a business as usual trajectory, will continue to climb, not least because the Chinese economy will continue to grow, infrastructure will continue to be built and the energy sector will continue to depend heavily on coal. All this is bad news for the planet but not a reason to point the finger at a country that shows every sign of wishing to face its responsibility for the future – provided we accept our responsibility for the past.
So what is the best response? Developed countries like Britain grew rich emitting carbon. Even today, for all the UK's self-righteousness towards the sins of the developing world, our progress towards a low carbon economy is pathetically slow. But as the balance of the world economy shifts towards Asia, the key to the future lies substantially in other hands. If catastrophic climate change is to be avoided – and the chances look increasingly slim - the major emerging economies of India, Brazil and China cannot afford to follow the carbon heavy path that Britain pioneered.
How can it be avoided? First we have to put our money where our mouth is and drastically reduce our own emissions. Of course, we could try telling China and other developing countries that they have to stay poor so that we can go on emitting more than our fair share of greenhouse gases, but what would be the point? All it would achieve is early onset Armageddon and the contempt of a developing world whose cooperation we need in order to reach any global deal on climate mitigation.
On the other hand, we can recognise that it is in everybody's interest, including China's, that China follow a low carbon road to growth and that it is our responsibility under the Kyoto protocol to help developing countries, including China, to do so.
Fortunately, China has understood that climate change is a threat to its own future prosperity and has embarked on a programme of renewable energy and energy efficiency that rivals anything seen in Europe. In contrast to the UK, the demand for renewables in China, including wind power, is growing exponentially.Of course, China could do more. But the way to get China to do more is to do more ourselves and to look to greater cooperation in green technology development and deployment that will benefit us all.
• Isabel Hilton is based in London and is the editor of China Dialogue