http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theworldpost/
TONGCHUAN, CHINA — World leaders are gathering Tuesday at the United Nations in New York City, hoping to talk their way out of decades of gridlock on climate change. The high-minded proclamations will make international headlines, but the reality is they matter little compared with what’s happening in places like Tongchuan, a dusty, smog-shrouded city in the beating black heart of Chinese coal country. This is a region where a large chunk of the world’s carbon emissions originate, and this is where government pollution controls and anemic markets for coal may provide the best hope of averting a climate disaster.
Tongchuan has long been emblematic of China’s take-no-prisoners approach to environmental resources, scraping as much coal as possible from the earth and feeding it into local cement factories. But collapsing coal prices, depleted natural resources and government pollution controls are forcing the city to reinvent itself.
After riding a 10-year export and infrastructure binge, China’s coal markets have slumped as the economy attempts to move toward services and domestic consumption. The China National Coal Association estimates that 70% of coal producers are losing money, and early 2014 saw China’s first sustained drop in coal consumption in decades.
Those market forces have been complemented by aggressive anti-pollution measures that followed a series of air quality disasters in recent years. Tongchuan’s home province of Shaanxi has pledged a 13% reduction in coal consumption by 2017, and Greenpeace estimates that if China meets all of its coal targets, the country’s 2020 emissions would drop by an amount equal to the combined 2013 emissions of Australia and Canada.
With over half of the world’s emissions growth in the last decade coming from Chinese coal, making a dent in the country’s use of the fossil fuel would be momentous for the climate. But political will to meet those targets could easily evaporate if the wrenching changes cause economic or political turmoil.
“The targets are very, very ambitious,” said Ailun Yang, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute, a global research organization focused on preserving natural resources. “I don’t think people have figured out how you can achieve the target without having major impacts on the economy and unemployment.”
Tongchuan is in the midst of working that puzzle out for itself. The city is already running short on its finite coal reserves, and as it makes the delicate transition away from coal and concrete, it’s banking on major growth in an unlikely sector: “Red tourism.” Tongchuan is playing up its role as a cradle of the communists’ Red Army, hoping to lure China’s urbanites out to a small ex-mining village that once served as the base for legendary bands of peasant guerillas.
Here in Zhaojin Village, former coal miners and corn farmers have had their jobs erased and their land purchased by the government to make way for a monument to China’s Communist Revolution, accompanied by a new driving range and artificial ski slope. The provincial government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two years to construct these facilities, hoping that tourist dollars can fill the gaping hole left by abandoned mines.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/china-coal_n_5866762.html?utm_hp_ref=world