Author: Chris P. Nielsen Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262315424 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 445
Book Description
A groundbreaking U.S.–Chinese inquiry into the effects of recent air pollution controls and prospective carbon taxes on China's economy and environment. China's carbon dioxide emissions now outstrip those of other countries and its domestic air quality is severely degraded, especially in urban areas. Its sheer size and its growing, fossil-fuel-powered economy mean that China's economic and environmental policy choices will have an outsized effect on the global environmental future. Over the last decade, China has pursued policies that target both fossil fuel use and atmospheric emissions, but these efforts have been substantially overwhelmed by the country's increasing energy demands. With a billion citizens still living on less than $4,000 per year, China's energy and environmental policies must be reconciled with the goals of maintaining economic growth and raising living standards. This book, a U.S.–Chinese collaboration of experts from Harvard and Tsinghua University, offers a groundbreaking integrated analysis of China's economy, emissions, air quality, public health, and agriculture. It first offers essential scientific context and accessible summaries of the book's policy findings; it then provides the underlying scientific and economic research. These studies suggest that China's recent sulfur controls achieved enormous environmental health benefits at unexpectedly low costs. They also indicate that judicious implementation of carbon taxes could reduce not only China's carbon emissions but also its air pollution more comprehensively than current single-pollutant policies, all at little cost to economic growth.
Author: Matthew E. Kahn Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691169365 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
How individuals and the government are changing life in China's polluted cities Over the past thirty years, even as China's economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the environmental quality of its urban centers has precipitously declined due to heavy industrial output and coal consumption. The country is currently the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter and several of the most polluted cities in the world are in China. Yet, millions of people continue moving to its cities seeking opportunities. Blue Skies over Beijing investigates the ways that China's urban development impacts local and global environmental challenges. Focusing on day-to-day choices made by the nation's citizens, families, and government, Matthew Kahn and Siqi Zheng examine how Chinese urbanites are increasingly demanding cleaner living conditions and consider where China might be headed in terms of sustainable urban growth. Kahn and Zheng delve into life in China's cities from the personal perspectives of the rich, middle class, and poor, and how they cope with the stresses of pollution. Urban parents in China have a strong desire to protect their children from environmental risk, and calls for a better quality of life from the rising middle class places pressure on government officials to support greener policies. Using the historical evolution of American cities as a comparison, the authors predict that as China's economy moves away from heavy manufacturing toward cleaner sectors, many of China's cities should experience environmental progress in upcoming decades. Looking at pressing economic and environmental issues in urban China, Blue Skies over Beijing shows that a cleaner China will mean more social stability for the nation and the world.
Author: Jun Ma Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231541899 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 313
Book Description
Suffocating smog regularly envelops Chinese metropolises from Beijing to Shanghai, clouding the future prospect of China's growth sustainability. Air pollutants do not discriminate between the rich and the poor, the politician and the "average Joe." They put everyone's health and economic prosperity at risk, creating future costs that are difficult to calculate. Yet many people, including some in China, are concerned that addressing environmental challenges will jeopardize economic growth. In The Economics of Air Pollution in China, leading Chinese economist Ma Jun makes the case that the trade-off between growth and environment is not inevitable. In his ambitious proposal to tackle severe air pollution and drastically reduce the level of so-called PM 2.5 particles—microscopic pollutants that lodge deeply in lungs—Ma Jun argues that in targeting pollution, China has a real opportunity to undertake significant structural economic reforms that would support long-term growth. Rooted in rigorous analyses and evidence-based projections, Ma Jun's "big bang" proposal aims to mitigate pollution and facilitate a transition to a greener and more sustainable growth model.
Author: Michael T. Rock Publisher: ISBN: 0199385327 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
Prior to 1979, China had a bifurcated and geographically-dispersed industrial structure made up of a relatively small number of large-scale, state-owned enterprises in various industries alongside numerous small-scale, energy-intensive and polluting enterprises. Economic reforms beginning in 1979 led to the rapid expansion of these small-scale manufacturing enterprises in numerous energy-intensive industries such as aluminum, cement, iron and steel, and pulp and paper. Subsequently, the government adopted a new industrial development strategy labeled "grasp the large, let go the small." The aims of this new policy were to close many of the unprofitable, small-scale manufacturing plants in these (and other) industries, create a small number of large enterprises that could compete with OECD multinationals, entice these larger enterprises to engage in high-speed technological catch-up, and save energy. China's Technological Catch-Up Strategy traces the impact of this new industrial development strategy on technological catch-up, energy use, and CO2 emissions. In doing so, the authors explore several detailed, enterprise-level case studies of technological catch-up; develop industry-wide estimates of energy and CO2 savings from specific catch-up interventions; and present detailed econometric work on the determinants of energy intensity. The authors conclude that China's strategy has contributred to substantial energy and CO2 savings, but it has not led to either a peaking of or a decline in CO2 emissions in these industries. More work is needed to cap and reduce China's CO2 emissions.
Author: Kylienne A. Clark Publisher: The Ohio State University ISBN: Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 594
Book Description
This book was written by undergraduate students at The Ohio State University (OSU) who were enrolled in the class Introduction to Environmental Science. The chapters describe some of Earth's major environmental challenges and discuss ways that humans are using cutting-edge science and engineering to provide sustainable solutions to these problems. Topics are as diverse as the students, who represent virtually every department, school and college at OSU. The environmental issue that is described in each chapter is particularly important to the author, who hopes that their story will serve as inspiration to protect Earth for all life.
Author: Robert Gottlieb Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262536064 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 471
Book Description
How Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China deal with such urban environmental issues as ports, goods movement, air pollution, water quality, transportation, and public space. Over the past four decades, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and key urban regions of China have emerged as global cities—in financial, political, cultural, environmental, and demographic terms. In this book, Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng trace the global emergence of these urban areas and compare their responses to a set of six urban environmental issues. These cities have different patterns of development: Los Angeles has been the quintessential horizontal city, the capital of sprawl; Hong Kong is dense and vertical; China's new megacities in the Pearl River Delta, created by an explosion in industrial development and a vast migration from rural to urban areas, combine the vertical and the horizontal. All three have experienced major environmental changes in a relatively short period of time. Gottlieb and Ng document how each has dealt with challenges posed by ports and the movement of goods, air pollution (Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and urban China are all notorious for their hazardous air quality), water supply (all three places are dependent on massive transfers of water) and water quality, the food system (from seed to table), transportation, and public and private space. Finally they discuss the possibility of change brought about by policy initiatives and social movements.
Author: Karoline Kan Publisher: Legacy Lit ISBN: 0316412031 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower. Through the stories of three generations of women in her family, Karoline Kan, a former New York Times reporter based in Beijing, reveals how they navigated their way in a country beset by poverty and often-violent political unrest. As the Kans move from quiet villages to crowded towns and through the urban streets of Beijing in search of a better way of life, they are forced to confront the past and break the chains of tradition, especially those forced on women. Raw and revealing, Karoline Kan offers gripping tales of her grandmother, who struggled to make a way for her family during the Great Famine; of her mother, who defied the One-Child Policy by giving birth to Karoline; of her cousin, a shoe factory worker scraping by on 6 yuan (88 cents) per hour; and of herself, as an ambitious millennial striving to find a job--and true love--during a time rife with bewildering social change. Under Red Skies is an engaging eyewitness account and Karoline's quest to understand the rapidly evolving, shifting sands of China. It is the first English-language memoir from a Chinese millennial to be published in America, and a fascinating portrait of an otherwise-hidden world, written from the perspective of those who live there.
Author: Sascha Roesler Publisher: Birkhäuser ISBN: 3035624240 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
While 20th century architecture learned to control the climate of a building, the architecture of the 21st century needs to learn to cope with the climate of cities. Problems such as urban heat and air pollution need to be included in planning and design. Based on empirical realities in Cairo, Chongqing, Geneva and Santiago de Chile, the book underlines that the materiality and social practices attached to room heating, compound greening, street alignment or climate policies together form the tissue for contemporary urban climates. It interweaves socio-cultural with meteorological data and pioneers the new concept of "thermal governance" by linking architectural and technological as well as legal and economic dimensions of climate control in urban environments.
Author: Ian W.H. Parry Publisher: International Monetary Fund ISBN: 1475597746 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 51
Book Description
Spreadsheet models are used to assess the environmental, fiscal, economic, and incidence effects of a wide range of options for reducing fossil fuel use in India. Among the most effective options is ramping up the existing coal tax. Annually increasing the tax by INR 150 ($2.25) per ton of coal from 2017 to 2030 avoids over 270,000 air pollution deaths, raises revenue of 1 percent of GDP in 2030, reduces CO2 emissions 12 percent, and generates net economic benefits of approximately 1 percent of GDP. The policy is mildly progressive and (at least initially) imposes a relatively modest cost burden on industries.
Author: Graciela Chichilnisky Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing ISBN: 0857939068 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 461
Book Description
This timely Handbook recognises the emergence of climate change as the defining topic of our time. With public climate discourse growing more urgent every year, this Handbook brings together international experts from different economic disciplines to answer critical climate policy questions.
Author: Chris P. Nielsen
Author: Matthew E. Kahn
Author: Jun Ma
Author: Michael T. Rock
Author: Kylienne A. Clark
Author: Robert Gottlieb
Author: Karoline Kan
Author: Sascha Roesler
Author: Ian W.H. Parry
Author: Graciela Chichilnisky