China’s renewable-energy capacity to reach 500 gigawatts by 2020
I know saying is not doing, and that’s certainly true in democratic countries that are politically polarized, but when China says it’s going to do something, you can be sure it’s going to try. The world’s largest emitter of CO2 may not be signing onto any international climate treaties, but don’t confuse that for inaction. The country has committed over the next 10 years to building enough renewable-energy capacity that it could serve a country the size of Canada four times over. As we squabble about how to combat emissions and how to move forward in the green economy, China is doing. We can blame China for its current emissions, which are indirectly caused by us, since it’s the insatiable consumerism of western society that’s driving those emissions; or, we can see China’s drive to deploy renewable energy as a reason to up our game. If you want to get a sense of what China has planned, click here. We need to get our collective heads out of the oil sands and start building the future, not basing our future on an addiction to the past.
Tags: China
Tyler Hamilton is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and former business columnist for the Toronto Star. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005.
December 7th, 2010 at 7:14 am
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