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A camel walks in front of the Dabancheng Wind Farm in Xinjiang (2005)
Our climate and energy campaign has three main goals.
1. To ensure China takes a leading role in international climate negotiations.
2. To lobby China to move away from coal and to invest heavily in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
3. To get the Chinese public to take personal action and support government action on climate change.
How are we doing this?
•We work with Chinese academics to publish policy recommendations to the government so that our demands are backed up by hard science and economics.
•We educate and encourage the Chinese public to support actions to stop climate change.
•We document the effects of climate change in China to help our public and government campaigns.
International climate action
Greenpeace has come up with an energy [r]evolution scenario where China could cut its 2005 emissions by about 30% by 2050 [a 43% increase on its 1990 emissions, but a huge cut from current emissions]. |
In December 2009 the world will meet in the Danish capital of Copenhagen to decide on how nations will cut global greenhouse pollution.
We will be calling on China to play a leadership role at those crucial negotiations so the world ends up with a strong legally-binding agreement.
China's coal crisis
The bulk of China’s greenhouse gas emissions come from burning coal.
As well as driving climate change, the mining, processing and burning of coal causes dangerous respiratory illnesses, destroys land, sucks up water resources and creates a filthy smog that covers crops and buildings as well as our lungs.
We are working with Chinese economists to show coal may be cheap now but is costing the country billions of dollars every year in environmental and social costs.
We want the Chinese government to adjust how coal is priced so that energy efficiency and renewable energy become cheap competitive solutions for the country’s energy and industrial sector.
People power
We run public engagement and media campaigns to both educate and encourage the Chinese public to show they care about climate change and they support strong policy action to combat climate change.
We also encourage people to save energy in their daily lives -- such as changing to energy-efficient light bulbs -- so everyone can reduce their carbon footprint.
