-Game of Thrones Valentines, for all your medieval romantic needs.

-I would like Michael Bay a lot more if he was making the Transformers movies as a way to fund a whole bunch of wacky passion projects.

-How are people feeling about Smash? James Poniewozick sums up some of my concerns.

-This Chinese sci-fi novel sounds fantastic.

-And because it’s that kind of day, George R.R. Martin reads nursery rhymes:

China's Vice President Xi Jinping. Source: AP

We can’t solve the climate crisis without China’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions and deploying more clean energy. But the geopolitical stakes are so high and so complicated, building enough trust to get swift, meaningful action from an emerging powerhouse like China isn’t easy.

As China undergoes another major political transition this year, it’s important for us to understand how national security, energy and economic issues all influence the American-Chinese relationship — and how that may impact action on climate change.

Below, a few China experts at the Center for American Progress flesh out how those issues may evolve. While the piece does not explicitly deal with climate negotiations, one can see how changes to the country’s manufacturing sector, military standing, and information flow could impact how China chooses to address climate. — S Lacey

by Rudy deLeon, Melanie Hart, Ali Fisher

This week, President Barack Obama is meeting the man who will steer China forward over the next decade. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping is clearly a man that Americans need to get to know.

Vice President Xi will almost certainly become the next General Secretary of the Communist Party of China—China’s top leadership position—in November 2012. His visit will offer a taste of how the United States will interact with the next generation of Communist party leaders.

Xi Jinping will hold China’s highest political position, but he will not rule the country alone. Back in Beijing China’s current leaders are negotiating furiously among themselves to select a crop of seven to nine cadres that will serve as the country’s next “board of directors” on the Politburo Standing Committee. The candidates for those positions are a fascinating group. They include a well-known finance guru, an apparent reformist who recently made press for his delicate handling of land protests in Guangdong, and a red-flag-waving nationalist who is making a movie about his mafia-busting campaigns in the Chinese west even as his chief lieutenant disappears under a cloud of controversy.

As this intriguing group is preparing to take the helm in Beijing, the United States is realizing that the China we are dealing with today is not the China we have grown accustomed to over the past few decades. U.S. policymakers are waking up from a long post-September 11 war in the Middle East and realizing that, while our attentions were focused elsewhere, China has grown and changed dramatically. To keep up, our foreign and economic policy approaches to China will have to change as well.

On the economic front Chinese enterprises are no longer serving only as cheap workshops for manufacturing U.S. products. For years China also has been throwing massive resources into training engineers in select industries of the future and building world-class research and development centers—particularly in the clean energy sector. Now those investments are paying off. China has suddenly gotten much better at producing the types of technologies that our nation is used to dominating. That could be good for the United States in some ways but very tricky in others. To complicate matters, China’s national government in Beijing and those at the provincial and local levels are giving Chinese companies an edge over U.S. companies by deploying state capitalist policies that our current trade institutions are not designed to address.

In the foreign policy realm, China is becoming increasingly important to the United States not only in the Asia-Pacific region but also globally. On the Iranian nuclear issue, for example, pressing Beijing to reduce its support for the Iranian regime continues to be a major part of U.S. strategy; yet in Syria, China’s recent veto in the United Nations of Arab League-backed action against the brutal Assad regime made U.N. action impossible. Indeed, in Libya, in Sudan, everywhere U.S. diplomats look China is there.

On the positive side, we are also seeing that China is beginning to understand that it is in their interest to not be isolated on global issues such as Iran and nuclear nonproliferation. This development is in part the result of U.S. actions that include moves to persuade China to act in the interest of the global community.

These steps by the Obama administration include actions to address the concerns of our allies in the Asia-Pacific region. In the military sphere, for example, Chinese naval and fishing vessels have grown increasingly bold in their skirmishes with the U.S. navy in the South China Sea, where coastlines are shared by several of our key allies. What’s more, the Chinese military has demonstrated it can use ground-based missiles to shoot down satellites in outer space and is using cyber tactics to penetrate the United States in ways that we are just now scrambling to figure out how to deal with.

But at the same time China is growing strong in an international sphere, the country is facing greater challenges internally. The Chinese Communist Party is struggling to figure out how to maintain their authoritarian system in a society that is becoming increasingly more dynamic. China now has more Internet users than any other country in the world—and these netizens are exerting more pressure on their leaders than ever before. Unlike the Tiananmen era, Chinese leaders no longer perfectly control information. Their citizens are passing information around so quickly that the regime can barely keep up, forcing them to pay more attention to public issues that the people care about such as environmental protection, food safety, and even landholding rights.

This flood of information about leadership corruption and other injustices in China is spurring even more local protests. While Beijing works hard to make sure these local protests stay isolated, it’s unclear whether that strategy will always work.

China’s next generation of leaders is well aware of all of these problems. They are learning different ways to use the public attention to their advantage over their rivals. Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai is the most obvious example. Bo is constantly courting media attention, turning local politics into a fascinating soap opera that even the foreign press is becoming addicted to. Just this week Bo’s local chief of police—who is well known across the country as the “mafia buster” who wears a bullet-proof vest and carries a gun everywhere he goes—reportedly fled to the U.S. consulate to seek asylum after an apparent falling out with Bo. Now the local government—which reports to Bo Xilai—claims the runaway police chief has been sent off to receive some form of “vacation-style treatment” for job-related stress.

For the first time since the 1949 revolution, the Chinese press is covering every twist and turn of this and other newsworthy political developments, which is opening up the black box of elite Chinese politics in ways that we have never seen before. That will be critical not only for the Chinese public but also for the United States because the only way we can get smarter about dealing with this rising China is to get smarter about dealing with the Chinese leaders and the Chinese people themselves.

On major issues—trade, foreign policy, and potentially military relations—interests within China could grow increasingly diverse, not only among the Chinese people but—at least in some cases—possibly among the core leaders themselves. That can present both pitfalls and opportunities for the United States. Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States, then, marks the beginning in many ways of a new relationship with China.

Getting to know Xi and his colleagues and rivals, as well as his nation’s problems and promise, is very important.

– Rudy deLeon in Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. Melanie Hart is a Policy Analyst on China Energy and Climate Policy at the Center. Ali Fisher is a Policy Analyst and Manager of the Center’s China Studies program.  This is a CAP repost.

See also: China’s Forthcoming Political Transition by Melanie Hart; China’s Quiet Role in Pressuring Iran by Rudy deLeon, Brian Katulis, Peter Juul, Ali Fisher; Managing Insecurities Across the Pacific by Nina Hachigian; Shining a Light on U.S.-China Clean Energy Cooperation by Melanie Hart

Pete Hoekstra

Hoekstra’s ad, which aired during the Super Bowl last weekend, featured an Asian woman in a rice paddy in China — the scene was actually shot in California — speaking broken English and thanking Stabenow because “we take your jobs.” Hoesktra is currently running for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat. Watch the ad here.

ThinkProgress spoke with Anuzis at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday about the ad. Anuzis spared few punches, calling the ad “dumb” and in “bad taste.”

KEYES: There’s been a bit of a controversy this week with this new ad. What’s your take? Do you think it was in poor taste?

ANUZIS: I’m not too worried about the poor taste, I just think it was a dumb ad. Pete Hoekstra voted to raise taxes, Pete Hoekstra voted for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” Pete Hoekstra voted five times to increase the debt ceiling, and then he goes out and leads with his chin by saying, “I’m against Debbie Stabenow because she sold all of our debt to China.” Well, he voted for that debt. [...]

KEYES: A lot of people have said this borderlines on racial insensitivity. Do you think you would agree with that?

ANUZIS: At best it was in bad taste. It’s not something I would have done. But I’m not too worried about that as much as the issues that are behind that. I think the beauty of this ad is the hypocrisy that Pete Hoekstra is trying to go after Debbie Stabenow for spending when he voted the same way.

Anuzis also called out Hoekstra for his “hypocrisy” in voting for many of the proposals that increased the very debt discussed in the ‘China’ ad.

Though Hoekstra originally unveiled the ad on the website www.debbiespenditnow.com, a major backlash ensued and he took down the site yesterday, now redirecting visitors to his campaign website. The ad itself is still live on Youtube, however.

His Republican primary opponent, Clark Durant, released a response ad this week, criticizing Hoekstra’s ad as “demeaning.”

“There is a proposal from the secretary-general of the Arab League to form a joint mission for Syria in coordination with the United Nations, and it will be presented before the planned Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on Sunday in Cairo,” the Arab League’s deputy head, Ahmed Ben Helli, told reporters today.

The upcoming ministerial meeting in Cairo may also issue a statement on China and Russia’s veto of a U.N. Security Council Resolution last Saturday, reports Reuters. The resolution was based on an Arab peace plan that had the support of the rest of the Security Council but China and Russia’s veto brought criticism from both Western and Arab nations.

The ongoing artillery bombardment of Homs, a recently leaked report detailing the failures of an Arab League observer mission, and the Russian and Chinese veto have left the Arab League and the United Nations looking for new strategies to halt the bloodshed.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby announced this week that a new mission would need international backing, better equipment and more observers than the Arab League mission. Yesterday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed that Elaraby had proposed a joint mission.

Consultations will be held with the Arab League and Security Council members “before fleshing out the details,” said the U.N. chief. But Western powers offered a lukewarm response to the proposal. Agence France-Presse reports that France said there would have to be “guarantees” for the mission and Germany called it a “very serious” idea but emphasized that conditions would have to be met before such an effort could be launched.

While diplomats discuss what steps to take next, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Syrian government to stop shelling residential areas of Homs. “Those responsible for such horrific attacks will have to answer for them,” HRW’s Anna Neistat in a statement earlier today.

Rights groups estimate that more than 6,000 people have died since protests began eleven months ago.

But as TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, that profit is earned on the backs of Chinese workers who “continue to toil in tough conditions.” Apple contracts with companies in China to ensure swift and cheap production of a new product. But rather than put a percentage of those billions into improving working conditions for the people who make the iPad and iPhone, the company sits by and allows its manufacturers to maintain disastrous working conditions.

In fact, as the New York Times reported, according to employees, advocates, and Apple itself, these suppliers force workers — including child laborers — to toil in hazardous working environments:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

One of these suppliers, Foxconn, saw so many workers committing suicide at its factories that it instituted a no-suicide pact for employment and installed nets on factory roofs to prevent workers from jumping to their death. A former management employee at this company said, “Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost.” “Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he added.

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said a former Apple executive who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

With total cash holdings of $97.6 billion, Apple could cover Greece’s debt repayments for two years or buy 2,000 tons of gold. Or, Apple could simply put a portion of that profit towards enforcing its supplier code of conduct or finding manufacturers that will abide by it. Instead, Apple allows suppliers to subordinate their workers’ welfare for the sake of a cheaper iPad.

And that’s during a “slowdown.” Compared to the breathtaking growth in installations between 2007 and 2009 in China, the 38% growth in 2010 was a noticeable change. With Project developers in the country still facing quality control problems and grid interconnection roadblocks, and manufacturers seeing declining profits in a crowded market, there are plenty of on-the-ground challenges in China.

But strong government targets and a hunger for any energy sources available are pushing a steady increase in installations, making China a continued leader in the global wind market. The Chinese government projects that by 2050, the market will reach 1,000 GW of installed capacity and be worth $1.9 trillion. That would meet roughly 20% of electricity demand in the country.

That’s a staggering amount of wind development. China and the U.S., the number one and number two wind markets in the world respectively, both have installed capacity in the mid 40-GW range. But while the U.S. has only state-level targets that run through the mid-2020′s, China is looking 25 years further and projecting an installation of more than 20 times that amount.

And by 2020, Chinese officials say wind will be competitive with coal there — an economic cross-over of absolute necessity, considering the baffling amount of coal being consumed in China.

In addition to wind, China may see up to 5 GW of solar-photovoltaic installations through 2015, and 20 GW of installs through 2020.

Related posts:

• Video: 30,000 Chinese ‘Occupy’ Highway to Protest Polluting Coal Plants
• Interactive Graphic: China’s Explosive Consumption of Coal
• China’s New Plan for Solar Power Supremacy

As expected, much of the recent growth in Asia — particularly since 2003 — has come from China. That country’s use of coal has increased 500% since 1980, made up almost three quarters of Asian consumption, and half of global consumption last year.

Clicking on the graphic below will re-direct you to the EIA’s website, where you can watch the animation.

Back in September, the EIA published its International Energy Outlook, which we described as a “denier’s fantasy world.” Under a do-nothing, business-as-usual scenario, the agency predicts China’s continued use of coal will increase carbon emissions so dramatically, the country’s climate pollution levels will double the U.S. in the next 15 years.

China has been deploying renewables at an astonishing pace. But its use of coal has far outpaced any sort of clean technologies being installed. If we want to see the circles in these graphics stop their dramatic ballooning, our current path doesn’t come close to addressing the problem.

Oh. And I forgot to mention that the Canadians are eying China as their biggest customer for tar sands crude.

Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

Gingrich, who characterized Palestinians as “terrorists” during a December 10th GOP debate and told the Jewish Channel that Palestians are an “invented” people, would seem to be mirroring the hardline positions taken by his early, and cash flush, benefactor.

“Sheldon has always loved Newt. He stuck with him through all of this,” Fred Zeidman, an Adelson friend and major player in the American Jewish community who is backing Mitt Romney told The Daily Beast’s Aram Roston. “He stuck with him when he stumbled. Newt, I think, is very reflective of Sheldon’s mindset. Particularly with Israel.”

While Adelson and Gingrich appear to share the same right-wing agenda on the Middle East, the casino magnate’s business dealings in China have proven a political liability for him at home. Adelson allegedly helped crush a congressional measure by House Republicans opposing Beijing’s Olympic bid. “The bill will never see the light day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it,” he reportedly told Beijing’s mayor in 2001 after phoning then House Majority Whip Tom Delay. The Sands Corporation went on to receive a lucrative casino license from the Chinese government, permitting them to begin a massive development in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR).

Responding to Adelson’s close dealings with the Chinese government, the Christian Coalition of Alabama’s president, Dr. Randy Brinson denounced Adelson for “not sharing our values.” “Where Sheldon Adelson has placed his treasure makes it quite clear where his heart is: in gambling and backing the regime in China that persecutes Christians,” he said.

Gingrich will face his own difficulties in persuading Christian evangelicals troubled by his multiple marriages and extramarital affairs to support his candidacy. But Sheldon Adelson’s noticeable presence in the Gingrich camp may prove another obstacle in winning over the all-important Christian-right.

Each year, protests spring up to counter the construction of dirty coal plants. But this appears to be the biggest yet. Officials now say they will abandon plans to build a new coal plant in the area. Two people were reportedly killed in clashes with police, but the government is denying those reports.

China’s coal use has exploded over the last few decades. Since 1980, coal consumption in China has grown 500%, and now represents three quarters of consumption in Asia. That has coincided with a five-fold increase of lung cancer since 1970, now the leading cause of death in China. (Of course, an increase in smoking is also a huge contributor.)

Watch the protesters gather in the streets throughout Guandong Province protesting coal plants and local land rights:

AP Photo

Industry: Light bulb war a dim idea

Big Business usually loves it when the GOP goes to war over federal rules.

But not when it comes to light bulbs.

Brazil’s forest policy could undermine its climate goals

Brazil, caretaker of the world’s largest rain forest, is about to enact broad new regulations that opponents say could loosen restrictions on Amazon deforestation and increase the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The move comes after two years of often roiling debates and dozens of hearings across the country over how to update a 1965 law that was designed to control slash-and-burn agriculture. Backers say the proposed Forest Code bill, which is expected to be signed into law early next year, would protect the Amazon while easing the regulatory burden on small farmers.

Brazil, a leader on climate change and host of next June’s U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is charting a climate strategy shaped by domestic politics and economic concerns that sometimes appears at odds with its international environmental rhetoric. Such domestic pressures — clear also in increasingly influential developing countries such as China and India — have created uncertainty over how the world will curb its carbon output by the end of the decade, even as negotiators gear up to forge a new global warming pact by 2015.

“It sends a mixed message because Brazil has positioned itself as a country that’s committed itself to saving the forest cover to the benefit of the world,” said Christian Poirier, Brazil program director for Amazon Watch. “The new forest code flouts all that.”

Coalmine a ‘threat to global warming target’

The development of coal ”mega-mines” in central Queensland such as the massive China First project will destroy the world’s chance of keeping global warming to 2 degrees, Greenpeace says.

In its submission tomorrow to the federal government on the environmental impact of mining magnate Clive Palmer’s $7.5 billion China First mine, the environmental group will say that this and other big projects in Queensland’s Galilee Basin will lock in huge coal exploitation for decades to come.

”If this goes ahead, it will destroy our chances of keeping global warming to 2 degrees,” Greenpeace campaigner John Hepburn said. 

The International Energy Agency recently reported that the world needed to make ”urgent and radical policy changes” if it was to stick to the internationally agreed goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees by the end of the century. The agency drew up a ”carbon budget” that would allow the world to meet that target.

A Solar Trade War Could Put Us All in the Dark

After decades of global competition and collaboration, many solar markets around the world have reached grid parity—the point at which generating solar electricity, without subsidies, costs less than the electricity purchased from the grid. In other words, solar technology is ready to be a major contributor to solving our planet’s energy and environmental crisis.

However, trade protectionism threatens to inhibit the solar industry at the very time when it is breaking through to a new level of global interdependence, collaboration, and maturity.

On October 18, the U.S. government was asked to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese solar cells and modules, based on the argument that China-based producers have been heavily subsidized and are selling solar products at unfairly low prices. Perhaps not surprisingly, some Chinese companies have now asked the Chinese government to impose tariffs on imports of American solar products, arguing that U.S.-based producers have been heavily subsidized, too. And just like that, the production of affordable and competitive solar products has become a political liability in the world’s two largest producers and consumers of energy.

India’s Rajasthan Opens Bidding for 200 Megawatts of Solar Farms

India’s Rajasthan state started accepting bids from developers to set up 200 megawatts of solar power projects in an area that has the country’s second-most solar radiant exposure.

The state plans to auction contracts for 100 megawatts of photovoltaic plants and 100 megawatts of solar thermal plants, Naresh Pal Gangwar, chairman of the state-run Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corp. said today by telephone.

Reliance Power Ltd. (RPWR), Shriram EPC Ltd. (SEPC) and SunEdison, the solar development unit of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. (WFR), are among companies that are developing projects in Rajasthan, believed to have some of India’s most promising resources to develop energy from sunlight with its sprawling desert terrain.

Solar thermal technology uses sunlight to heat liquids that produce steam for generators, while photovoltaic plants use panels to turn sunlight directly into power.

Romney Jabs Newt Over 2008 Global Warming Ad

Mitt Romney took a jab at GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich today during a town hall meeting for an ad the former speaker filmed with Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi aimed at spreading awareness on climate change.

Asked about his views on global warming by an audience member, Romney responded without missing a beat, “First of all, I’m not planning on cutting an ad with Nancy Pelosi.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

“In all fairness, Speaker Gingrich also said that was the biggest mistake of his life,” Romney quickly added, laughing.

Romney was referring to an ad, titled “We Can Solve It,” that was released in 2008 and featured Gingrich and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sitting on a couch together urging people to address global warming.

China scales up solar power capacity plan 50%

* Solar power generation to hit 20 billion kWh in 2015

BEIJING, Dec 15 (Reuters) – China has further revised up its solar power development target for 2015 by 50 percent from its previous plan, state media reported on Thursday.

The government has set a target for installed solar power generating capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2015 and wind power capacity to hit 100 GW, China National Radio reported, citing an announcement from the National Energy Administration.

The ambitious move may have been encouraged by a rapid increase in solar power installation in recent months after the government unified grid feed-in tariffs for solar projects for the first time in July, and offered a higher price for projects that would be put into operation before the year end.

China had doubled its 2015 solar power goal to 10 GW after the Japanese nuclear power crisis.

Installed solar power capacity at the end of 2010 was less than 1 GW in China, the world’s largest exporter of photovoltaic products and home to some of the industry’s top players, such as Trina Solar, JA Solar, Suntech Power and LDK Solar.

For a detailed analysis of China’s renewables strategy, see the recent post by Melanie Hart, CAP’s Policy Analyst on China Energy and Climate Policy “China’s New Plan for Solar Power Supremacy.”  Here’s more from Reuters:

Annual solar power output will reach 20 billion kilowatt hours by 2015 and wind power output 190 billion kWh, China National Radio said in a text report posted on its website (www.cnr.cn).

Of the planned 100 GW wind power capacity in 2015, 5 GW will be built in the ocean, it said.

Solar industry reports record third-quarter growth

Solar power is a booming business in the U.S., with more domestic solar installations completed in the third quarter of this year than during all of 2009, according to a report released Wednesday by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Assn.

“The U.S. solar industry is on a roll, with unprecedented growth in 2011,” said Rhone Resch, chief executive of the solar group. “Solar is now an economic force in dozens of states, creating jobs across America.”  The Solar Energy Industries Assn. is the national trade group for the U.S. solar energy industry, and it has 1,100 member companies.

Some 449 megawatts of power were installed in various parts of the U.S. in the third quarter in a variety of projects that ranged in size from small residential systems to large, utility-scale facilities, the report said. One megawatt is the equivalent of 1 million watts of power.

For Haiti, climate change is more present fear than horrible imagining

For people in the UK, a weak deal at Durban on climate change may be disappointing, but it is not something that will affect their everyday life – at least not for some years to come.

In Haiti, though, hurricanes are becoming more frequent and unpredictable. In 2008, the summer before the earthquake, Haiti endured four tropical storms in a row. Our fourth largest city, Gonaives, was inundated for months.

It is not just the strength and frequency of rain, but the particular vulnerability of Haitian terrain. The same storms can pound the neighbouring Dominican Republic, or nearby Jamaica, and do far less damage. Haiti is almost completely denuded of trees, with less than 2% of its original forest cover still standing. So when storms hit, landslides almost invariably occur, as the topsoil has few tree roots binding it together and holding it in place.

Haiti has been progressively losing its lush woodland ever since 1804, when the country was forced to start chopping down its old growth mahogany forests to help pay the “reparations” imposed by its former French colonialists following independence….

It is not just excessive rain combined with poor forest cover that causes problems for the population, but the unpredictability of the rains. Some areas in the far north west of Haiti have been experiencing unseasonable droughts in recent years, causing pastures to dry up and crops to fail.

Chevron’s Crude-Oil Spill in Brazil Prompts $10.6 Billion Lawsuit

A Brazilian lawsuit that seeks to halt Transocean Ltd. (RIG) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) operations after an oil spill would reduce the country’s offshore drilling at a time when it wants to double output in ten years.

Federal prosecutors in Campos, in the oil region of Rio de Janeiro state, are suing both companies for 20 billion reais ($10.6 billion) in environmental and social damages and asked a court to suspend their operations, according to a statement yesterday. Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, and Transocean, based in Vernier, Switzerland, said they haven’t been notified and are cooperating with authorities.

The case imperils Brazil’s plan to boost crude output because Transocean operates 10 out of the 61 rigs working in the country and it would be hard to replace them in a tight market for oil equipment, said Judson Bailey, an analyst at Jefferies & Co Inc. Brazilian oil production growth has slowed after the country increased safety requirements following the spill at BP Plc’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Coal Ash Dams Are A Major Hazard Coal-State Politicians Want To Ignore

Just days before the three-year anniversary of the devastating dike failure at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant, the Environmental Protection Agency still has little authority to regulate the storage of toxic coal ash produced as a byproduct of coal power.

A new report released Tuesday shows coal ash’s harmful environmental effects are more widespread than previously understood. Meanwhile, a bill proposed by a bipartisan coalition of coal-state senators would strip away the federal government’s power to do anything about it.

The new report from the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project identified 19 coal ash dump sites in nine states where heavy concentrations of arsenic, boron, manganese and other pollutants contaminate the groundwater nearby. At some of those sites, the EPA had noted only “potential” contamination, but when the EIP did its own tests, it found chemicals had leached into the ground.

21-year old Abigail Borah is led from the COP after expressing her frustrations to American negotiators over the lack of bold U.S. action on climate.

I come from the energy world. If you’ve ever been to an energy conference — particularly one revolving around fossil fuels — the first thing you’ll notice is that the scene is dominated by old, white males. Depending on the renewable energy conference, the crowd gets much more diverse in age and ethnicity.

The COP climate conference is a whole different scene. Of course, it’s an international UN sponsored event, so it’s inherently diverse. What’s unique is the large number of young people in attendance.

It’s easy to get bogged down by the fact that the international negotiations are slow moving and, despite the last-minute deal brokered in Durban, still haven’t gotten us to close to where we need to be scientifically.

I remember one young woman in a background briefing with American negotiators last week saying “you’ve been negotiating this issue my entire life.”

If you’re still feeling down by the pace of action, one thing should give you hope about the process: the active presence of younger generations at these conferences — tracking negotiations, asking pointed questions, setting up meetings with diplomats, organizing protests, and doing anything they can to get youth voices heard.

I know this isn’t particularly new. Youth delegations have been coming to these meetings in greater numbers each year. But as a newcomer to the climate negotiation scene, it’s been pretty remarkable for me to see.

Two of these young adults particularly struck me: 24-year old American Ellie Johnston and 22-year old Chinese Songquio Yao, who went to Durban to “build bridges” and do what so many negotiators were unable to do for years. Johnston was part of a 14-member delegation representing SustainUS, a national youth coalition devoted to sustainability issues. And Yao was with a 13-member delegation from the China Youth Climate Action Network.

The Chinese and American youth delegations both met with their respective negotiators to express their passion for the issues.

We all know there’s a range of geopolitical issues that go into bringing countries together to pass something like the Durban climate package. But I can’t help but believe that the active presence of vocal, intelligent youth played a strong role too.

“We know this is so important for China’s future. We are here to tell our leaders that we care deeply about addressing climate change — and Minister Xie [china's chief negotiator] has encouraged us to stay heavily involved,” said Yao, talking about her meeting with Chinese leaders.

“Waiting until 2020 for international commitments to reduce emissions is not okay,” said Johnston. “We’re hear to put an emphasis on younger generations and express our frustrations.”

That attitude and engagement were the norm at Durban.

Also last week, 21-year old Abigail Borah, a member of SustainUS and a student at Middlebury College in Vermont, received substantial media attention after standing up in negotiations and delivering an impassioned plea for action to the U.S. delegation:

“I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot.  The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair ambitious and legally binding treaty.

You must take responsibility to act now, or you will threaten the lives of youth and the world’s most vulnerable.

You must set aside partisan politics and let science dictate decisions. You must pledge ambitious targets to lower emissions not expectations. Citizens across the world are being held hostage by stillborn negotiations.

In the end, negotiators did put aside their differences and hammer out a deal in Durban. I know that many of the youth in attendance were very unhappy that we didn’t go further with binding commitments — and very rightly so. But they should be proud of their role in showing policy makers why these decisions are so important. After all, they have the most to lose.

“I’m really encouraged by the work my generation is doing around this. A lot of us get it,” said Johnston.

For the past two weeks, speculation has grown about China’s apparent public willingness to consider binding targets.

Up until the meeting in Durban, China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, refused to make a binding international commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Many in the international community view a binding international emissions commitment from the Chinese as a critical barrier to slowing the pace of climate change.

Then, to the surprise of many at the meeting, the Chinese delegation last weekend kicked off a flurry of speculation with a series of statements that appeared to signal a willingness to open the door to reconsidering its previous refusals. Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua suggested that the country may be willing to consider binding emissions reductions after 2020, and he outlined five conditions that the international community would have to meet for a post-2020 binding China climate deal.

Xie’s comments attracted significant global attention, and reporters began calling China the “success story,” the “unlikely darling,” and the “rock star” of the Durban climate conference. But soon, confusion reigned. Other parties—particularly the United States and Europe—began to express skepticism that China was actually offering anything new. The media, in turn, began backing away from the China story, and the flurry slowly died down, leaving many confused about what exactly the Chinese had said and what exactly happened in South Africa.

So what do we know as this 17th meeting of the UNFCCC meeting draws to a close about the direction of Chinese climate-change policy? Here are some tea-leaf readings from the conference in Durban.

China’s Durban messaging may reflect a change in tone while the substance is unclear

Compared to China’s stance at the last UNFCCC meeting in Cancun, Mexico, the Chinese message at Durban certainly appears to demonstrate a softened position. In Cancun, the Chinese delegation absolutely refused to open the door to any form of international legally binding emissions reduction commitments for developing countries at any point in time—they insisted that developing country commitments should be voluntary at the international level, not legally binding.

In Durban, however, Xie Zhenhua appeared to shift stance when he stated

I think after 2020, we should also negotiate a legally binding document…. China is willing to bear the obligations of a legally binding commitment.

Confusion emerged, however, over what type of legally binding commitment Xie was actually talking about. The United States and Europe want China to make international legally binding emissions reduction commitments under some internationally binding agreement, with the emphasis on the word “international.” That aspect is important because international commitments entail international oversight, which makes it easier for the international community to monitor China’s compliance.

At present, China’s only international emissions reduction commitment is the mitigation commitment under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord—to reduce carbon intensity by 40 percent to 45 percent (based on 2005 levels) by 2020. All commitments under the Copenhagen Accord, however, are not legally binding in an international sense.

The Chinese say they are basically adhering to their Copenhagen target domestically in a step-by-step fashion via their five-year plans. The 12th Five-Year Plan includes a mandatory domestic carbon intensity commitment (to reduce intensity by 17 percent between 2011 and 2015). That commitment is designed to move the country toward their 2020 emissions mitigation commitment under Copenhagen. China has promised to follow through with the second half of that commitment in their next five-year plan (2016-2020). China’s national five-year plans must be approved by their National People’s Congress, so, in effect, those targets are legally binding, albeit in a domestic and piecemeal sense.

Last year, at Cancun, there was some media buzz suggesting that the Chinese were considering binding that commitment internationally by submitting it for a U.N. resolution, but the Chinese delegation vehemently denied it. But that could be what the Chinese were opening the door to this year at Durban. Their Copenhagen mitigation commitment will expire in 2020, and they could replace it with another emissions reduction commitment that is legally binding at the international level.

Unfortunately, the language offered by the Chinese in Durban does not make that clear because it does not clarify whether they are talking about international legally binding commitments—which the international community wants to see—or domestically binding commitments. Because China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, the global community is extremely concerned about Chinese emissions. China’s emissions data, however, is problematic. China suffers from data reporting errors in all sectors, and emissions monitoring is no exception. That triggers concern in the international community because China’s current emissions reduction commitments are domestic, so many believe their domestic monitoring systems are inaccurate, which makes it hard to determine whether China is or is not meeting its commitments.

What also is generating skepticism in Durban is the fact that the Chinese did not clarify whether they are willing to sign on to a post-2020 internal treaty whereby all countries—including China—are legally bound at the international level, not just domestically. Their language left open the possibility for a post-2020 agreement where developed countries are bound internationally but developing countries are only bound at the national level—as China is today—and that is not something that the developed countries (particularly the United States and Europe) are willing to accept at this point.

Pushing China toward an acceptable intermediate step

The Chinese have not helped matters at Durban because they have refused to clarify what exactly they are or are not willing to consider after 2020. In theory, if the Chinese were truly open to something new, then they would want to get credit for it and get the negotiation ball rolling by clarifying their statement. Many in Durban, therefore, take their continued silence on this point as evidence that their earlier statements are just an attempt to muddy the waters and gain media credit without actually delivering.

At the same time, however, China is slowly shifting stance in some respects, and that is something that the international community should not ignore. Domestically, the Chinese are directing more and more resources and political will toward improving energy efficiency, reducing emissions and shifting the economy toward a low-carbon growth model. And they are doing so for very good internal domestic reasons—smothering air pollution is becoming one of the main political threats to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and China’s leaders also see the value of investing in clean energy products and services to boost the nation’s economic competitiveness.

Reading the tea leaves, the Chinese shifted their language about combatting climate change between 2010 to 2011 from “voluntary” to “legally binding,” and that appears to indicate that the country is looking for at least some intermediate step toward a stronger emissions commitment. To be sure, the Chinese are still hanging on to their insistence on “common but differentiated responsibilities,” so in the short term they are unlikely to agree to a legally binding international emissions commitment on par with what they expect from the developed countries.

What they could do, however, is to make legally binding international commitments on something other than emissions reductions. The best candidate is a commitment for measurement, reporting, and verification, or MRV.

MRV is a big issue with China. When China measures energy consumption, there is generally a mismatch between national and provincial-level statistics. The central government calculates national consumption based on national-level data while the provinces calculate provincial consumption based on provincial-data. In theory, when the provincial numbers are all added up, they should equal the national total. In reality, that never happens.

The aggregate provincial total is always higher, sometimes by up to 15 percent, and a 15-percent margin of error is fairly massive for national-level statistics. That has major implications for MRV because the Chinese calculate emissions based on energy consumption, so if the energy data is off, then the emissions data will be off as well, and that means the international community cannot trust what the Chinese are reporting.

If China were to join an international MRV regime, they could borrow more global expertise to improve their domestic measurement system, which in turn would improve their ability to measure and achieve key energy and climate targets at home. It would also improve China’s emissions transparency. That would give the international community assurance that China is actually meeting targets, and just might reduce some of the pressure for China to commit to a fully international binding agreement for emissions reduction now.

In short, if China still prefers a domestic legally binding emissions reduction agreement for now, one way to move forward and gain developed countries trust, without moving beyond their comfort zone, is to make the measurement process for that agreement legally binding at the international level rather than the agreement itself. This is a reasonable compromise that Beijing should consider.

Melanie Hart is a policy analyst on China energy and climate policy at the Center for American Progress.

by Melanie Hart and Tong Zhao

Many eyes are on the international climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa this week — particularly on China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.

The international community is upping the pressure on China to take serious steps to reduce emissions. China’s biggest climate pressures, however, are coming from within.

As living standards go up, Chinese citizens are paying more attention to quality-of-life issues, particularly air quality. They are pressuring their government to reduce air pollution — much as U.S. citizens pushed for the Clean Air Act — and that pressure is giving the Chinese leadership new incentives to adopt tighter air pollution standards and to take on more ambitious emissions reduction programs.

Air quality has been a hot topic in China for years, but the U.S. Embassy in Beijing added to the debate by offering an alternative source of information about local air pollution and the potential impacts on citizen health. In 2008 the U.S. embassy installed a roof-top air quality monitoring system that samples the Beijing air every hour. The embassy provides a mobile app that anyone can register for to receive the hourly readings, which define the conditions as “fine,” “terrible” or “hazardous” depending on the amount of pollution particles in the air.

These reports have created a major controversy in China, because the U.S. embassy bases their assessments on EPA standards that measure particulate air pollution down to the smaller (2.5 microns in diameter and below) particles.  China’s standards, in contrast, only measure and report particles down to the 10 micron (micrometer) level. That is a critical oversight, because PM 2.5 particles are among the most dangerous. Due to their small size, they can penetrate deeper into the lungs and cause more severe health damage.

If Chinese officials include PM 2.5 particles in their environmental reports without also tightening up regulatory standards to control those particles, that would lower the country’s environmental assessment ratings and create new pressures that many Chinese officials are not yet ready to deal with. This is a particular concern for China’s local government officials, who need good reports to pass up to their superiors, and who sometimes struggle to accurately measure local pollution emissions.

Chinese leaders are working to shift their economy toward cleaner and more efficient energy sources, but those upgrades are costly, and Chinese citizens and enterprises have limited ability to absorb higher utility bills. The government is stepping in to subsidize many of these upgrades, but the improvements still take time. In the interim, Chinese officials prefer to tailor their monitoring standards to their ability to actually regulate and enforce them. As long as they think controlling PM 2.5 particles is too difficult and costly, they prefer to keep those measurements out of their official assessment reports.

Some Chinese officials, therefore, were not too happy with the U.S. embassy’s mobile air pollution service, and they reportedly asked the embassy to shut it down (to no avail). But local citizens — many of whom have long distrusted the government’s air quality readings — have been signing up in droves.

This fall, Beijing is suffering repeated bouts of extremely severe air pollution. For multiple days running, the U.S. embassy monitoring station has registered air in the “hazardous” category, which according to the U.S. EPA is an “emergency condition” that could impact the entire population, not just sensitive groups. China’s official government reports, in contrast, have called the same conditions “level-3 minor pollution” (where level-1 is the most severe).

That discrepancy — and the severity of the health warnings from the U.S. embassy — have triggered serious public concern in China and a new round of debates about government transparency and the reliability of the government’s monitoring data.

At first, Chinese environmental officials and state media pushed back, claiming that their PM 10 standards were more scientific. Chinese citizens, however, did not back down. The air quality issue became a hot topic in the Chinese media and on online discussion forums, and the government has begun to realize that they will lose credibility if they do not address citizen concerns.

China’s Environmental Protection Ministry has responded by issuing the country’s first PM 2.5 air pollution standard, and they are also talking about heightening the existing PM 10 standard and adopting new measurements for carbon monoxide and ozone. Local officials are also setting up a new PM 2.5 monitoring station near Beijing.

There are two key takeaways here. First, Chinese citizens are pushing hard for cleaner air, and although they do not elect their leaders, they have more political influence than many foreign observers realize. China’s domestic environmental advocates are a strong ally for the international climate community, and we should not overlook them. Anything we can do to improve their access to accurate pollution information (as the U.S. embassy did with their air monitoring program) or increase their involvement in international climate discussions would be a good thing.

Second, this domestic pressure is pushing the Chinese government toward stricter air pollution standards and greenhouse gas emissions reductions domestically, and that will likely increase China’s willingness to accept more serious commitments at the international level.

These changes will certainly take time, and in the interim, the international community should keep pressuring China to do more.

However, we should not forget that when it comes to Chinese emissions, it is not the international community who has the most to lose. It is the Chinese citizens themselves. And when it comes to reducing the country’s emissions, they are a critical driving force that we should not overlook.

Melanie Hart is the China Energy and Climate Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress; Tong Zhao is an Intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress.

When China’s chief climate negotiator, Su Wei, said on Saturday that his country would “not rule out the possibility of [a] legally binding agreement,” and explained that “it depends upon the negotiations,” the frameworks being debated in Durban took on a new light.

However, the chief U.S. negotiator, Todd Stern, is expressing caution over the statements from Chinese officials. In an interview with Climate Progress, Stern said he needed to hear more from Wei before he took the comments seriously.

“I don’t think it’s anything different when you deconstruct it than we’ve seen before. But I have to meet with my counterpart, Mr. Xie [Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission], to see if there’s anything new.”

American officials have demanded that large developing emitters like China and India be a part of any binding agreement in order to consider participating in new negotiations.

Speaking to Climate Progress, Christine Figueres, executive secretary the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, called the hard line U.S. negotiating position “hamstrung.” But she also agreed with Stern that the statements from Chinese officials don’t yet mean much:

“It’s interesting. We hear those kinds of comments all the time from parties at these negotiations. But we’ll see what affect that’s going to have,” said Figueres.

If progress is made on some of the key frameworks being worked on in Durban, it could help bring the Chinese on board to a long-term commitment. Yesterday, Sterns’ counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, said that he would need to see progress on certain issues during the Durban talks.

Xie said that he would need to see progress on an international fund to help developing countries deploy clean energy and climate adaptation projects, as well as craft language that would continue to define “common but differentiated responsibilities” under a new global pact. Traditionally that phrase has been interpreted in the context of the Kyoto Protocol as requiring developed countries to have binding emission targets and developing countries have no binding targets. In subsequent agreements it has come to imply that developing countries don’t have to agree to the same level of transparency for the cuts they make.

That’s exactly the sort of thing American negotiators have pushed back on when considering a binding agreement beyond 2020. The key question is how firm the U.S. will be in this stance as the negotiations proceed.

Speaking to Climate Progress, Stern said that this meeting should be focusing on the substantive agenda achieved at last year’s climate summit in Cancun which, if implemented, would create a set of institutions and agreements that would cover some 85 percent of global emissions:

“If you look at Cancun from last year, it was a very, very important agreement to make commitments by all major economies, an agreement to set up a transparency system so we could see what everyone else is doing, an agreement to set up a green fund, a technology center, an adaptation and so forth. So there’s a whole lot of things that we agreed to do. Now the issue is, are we going to do them? And what we’re trying to do this year is make significant progress to get those different institutions actually stood up so that we can move forward.”

Nonetheless, the key question for most of the current 15,746 participants wandering the Durban climate conference is what the Chinese mean by their recent set of claims, and how they’ll impact the focus of this meeting.

Watch the video with Todd Stern:

UPDATE: Todd Stern said Tuesday that the he had spoken this morning with Xie and came to the same conclusion that the Chinese had not materially changed their negotiating stance.  While they are open to a binding commitment in the future, many conditions will have to be made and they are not ready now for the kind of agreement the U.S. has been asking for. Climate Progress also reported today that Artur Runge-Metzger, the EU chief negotiator, had come to a similar conclusion about the Chinese position. The Chinese delegation has not yet clarified their position any further.

On Monday, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) closed its acquisition of bankrupt Canadian tar sands producer OPTI Canada Inc. CNOOC gets OPTI’s 35 percent working interest in Long Lake and three other project areas located in the Athabasca region of northeastern Alberta, split with Canadian operator Nexen Inc. The deal cost $34 million for OPTI stock and $2 billion in debt. [Reuters]

On Wednesday, CNOOC and Nexen formed a joint venture, giving CNOOC a 20 percent working interest in the Kakuna, Angel Fire, and Cypress deepwater exploration wells in the Gulf of Mexico. [BusinessWeek]

These dirty investments in North American fossil fuel projects are just the latest in a rapid string of deals to give China access to high-polluting carbon energy from the Americas. Over the last three years, China-owned companies have invested over $18 billion in tar sands, shale gas, and coal projects in Canada and Venezuela:

November, 2011: China signs a $6 billion deal with Venezuela to develop tar sands — $4 billion to the Chinese-Venezuelan tar sands company Sinovensa to increase production from 118,000 barrels a day to 1.1 million barrels a day in 2014, and $2 billion to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela for refining projects, drills, and equipment. [Channel News Asia]

October, 2011: Sinopec spends $2.2 billion to acquire shale gas producer Daylight Energy, which controls 300,000 acres of oil and gas property, at a 70 percent premium. [Bloomberg]

May, 2010: China Investment Corporation spends $1.25 billion on Alberta tar sands — $817 million for a 45 percent stake in the Peace River tar sands project owned by Penn West Energy Trust, and $435 million for a 5 percent interest in the company. [Penn West Energy]

April, 2010: Sinopec spends $4.65 billion to buy ConocoPhillips’ 9 percent stake in tar sands producer Syncrude Canada. [New York Times]

February, 2010: PetroChina spends $1.73 billion to purchase 60 percent of AOSC’s MacKay River and Dover tar sands projects. [CRI]

July, 2009: China Investment Corporation spends $1.5 billion to purchase 17 percent of Teck Resources, Canada’s largest metallurgical coal and copper mining company. CIC was recently granted a seat on Teck’s board of directors. [China Daily]

In 2005, PetroChina and Enbridge signed a $2 billion deal to help the Canadian tar sands company develop the Northern Gateway Pipeline, a project intended to deliver 400,000 barrels of tar crude a day from Edmonton, Alberta to the British Columbia port town of Kitimat, giving China access to direct tar sands shipping.

The pipeline has been unbuilt for years, facing stiff opposition and economic challenges. This Friday, Gitxsan First Nation announced it would become “the first aboriginal partner” for the pipeline. On Thursday, 130 native groups in Western Canada pledged to block the project. Enbridge has offered up to a 10 percent stake in the pipeline to first nations who sign on.