Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

27 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH
between 2000 and 2007, constituting the major driver of China recently joining the US as the
world’s foremost emitter of atmospheric greenhouse gases (Bello 2008; Economy 2007a;
Heinberg 2008; Li 2008:2,5). 25
By 2004, permits to add 562 new coal-fired power plants to
China’s energy production complex before 2012 were already approved or queued up (Clayton
2004). As of 2009, China was keeping up its notorious pace of bringing on line between one and
two new plants per week, on average (Heinberg 2008; Parenti 2009); few, if any, of these plants
are outfitted with combined-cycle turbines or other cutting-edge clean technology (Economy
2007b; Kahn and Yardley 2007). The anticipated gross amount of carbon dioxide to be released
from these plants alone by 2012 will easily eclipse the anticipated net reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions attained by Kyoto Protocol signatories during the initial implementation of the accord
between 2005 and 2012 (Clayton 2004). Given extant North-South inequalities in both per capita
energy resource consumption and per capita greenhouse gas emission, it would be ethically
fraudulent to single out China’s crash program to augment its coal-fired power plant capacity as
an extraordinary environmental crime against humanity (McKibben 2005). But a simple and
unpleasant fact will not go away: this program could very well unleash into the atmosphere the
extra increment of carbon dioxide that catalyzes runaway global warming, a catastrophe that
would not only put paid to the chimera of Chinese hegemony, but would also devastate China’s
hundreds of millions of rural poor as severely as any other human collectivity in the world-system
(Gulick 2007; Parenti 2009).
In tandem with the overgrazing of livestock, climate change is already wreaking havoc on
the arid landscapes of northwestern China, and the resulting desertification negatively impacts not
only the relatively scant human population of the region, but also hundreds of millions of Chinese
downwind. Partly because of shrinking runoff from mountains capped with less glaciers and snow
than formerly (T Johnson 2007; Xinhuanet 2009), northern China now loses roughly 3000 square
kilometers to advancing desert every year (X Li 2003; Nolan 2004:27). The rate of desertification
in northwestern China specifically has doubled in the epoch of Dengist market reform and
accelerating global warming (Economy 2004:66) and the bleaker assessments of this crisis assert
that one-quarter of China’s land area can now be labeled as desert (Economy 2007a). Moreover,
China’s State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) recently classified about half of the
extant grassland as “moderately to severely degraded” (Economy 2004:65), which effectively
means it is not suitable for pasturage. In addition to turning tens of millions of herdspeople and
hardscrabble farmers into environmental refugees (Economy 2007a), the creeping deserts and
retreating grasslands are the proximate cause of the macabre sandstorms that now smother
Beijing and other large northern Chinese conurbations in toxic grit every spring (Economy
2007a). During the 1990’s, the number of sandstorms hitting northern China increased from an
annual average of 20 to an annual average of 35 (Economy 2004:66), and in March 2010 Beijing
and surrounding environs choked on the worst sandstorm since the mid-2000’s (Bodeen 2010). A
less celebrated effect of northwestern China’s emerging permanent drought is how it exacerbates
the increasingly erratic and increasingly diminished flow of northern China’s waterways,
including the tributaries of the Huang He (Yellow River) and hence the Huang He itself. While it
is well known that the Hwang He’s flow volume has dropped by about 22.3 percent since the
25 Astonishingly enough, China’s underground coal fires alone may now account for up to 3 percent of all
atmospheric carbon dioxide releases, an amount more or less equal to that emitted by the US’ car and light
truck fleet (Heinberg 2008; T Johnson 2008).