Drawing on practices and theories of environmental justice, 'China's responsibility for climate change' describes China's contribution to global warming and analyzes its policy responses. Contributors critically examine China's practical and ethical responsibilities to climate change from a variety of perspectives. They explore policies that could mitigate China's environmental impact while promoting its own interests and meeting the international community's expectations. The book is accessible to a wide readership, including academics, policy makers and activists. All royalties from sales of this book will be donated to Friends of the Earth.

As American leadership over climate change declines, China has begun to identify itself as a great power by formulating ambitious climate policies. Based on the premise that great powers have unique responsibilities, this book explores how China’s rise to great power status transforms notions of great power responsibility in general and international climate politics in particular. The author looks empirically at the Chinese party-state’s conceptions of state responsibility, discusses the influence of those notions on China’s role in international climate politics, and considers both how China will act out its climate responsibility in the future and the broader implications of these actions. Alongside the argument that the international norm of climate responsibility is an emerging attribute of great power responsibility, Kopra develops a normative framework of great power responsibility to shed new light on the transformations China’s rise will yield and the kind of great power China will prove to be. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, China studies, foreign policy studies, international organizations, international ethics and environmental politics.

Explores the shaping of China and India's energy and climate policies by two-level pressures characterized as wealth, status and asymmetrical interdependence.

As climate has warmed over recent years, a new pattern of more frequent and more intense weather events has unfolded across the globe. Climate models simulate such changes in extreme events, and some of the reasons for the changes are well understood. Warming increases the likelihood of extremely hot days and nights, favors increased atmospheric moisture that may result in more frequent heavy rainfall and snowfall, and leads to evaporation that can exacerbate droughts. Even with evidence of these broad trends, scientists cautioned in the past that individual weather events couldn't be attributed to climate change. Now, with advances in understanding the climate science behind extreme events and the science of extreme event attribution, such blanket statements may not be accurate. The relatively young science of extreme event attribution seeks to tease out the influence of human-cause climate change from other factors, such as natural sources of variability like El Niño, as contributors to individual extreme events. Event attribution can answer questions about how much climate change influenced the probability or intensity of a specific type of weather event. As event attribution capabilities improve, they could help inform choices about assessing and managing risk, and in guiding climate adaptation strategies. This report examines the current state of science of extreme weather attribution, and identifies ways to move the science forward to improve attribution capabilities.

The feeling of optimism that followed the COP 21 Paris Conference on Climate Change requires concrete action and steadfast commitment to a process that raises a number of crucial challenges: technological, political, social, and economic. As climate change worsens, new robust leadership is imperative. The EU, US and China Tackling Climate Change examines why a close collaboration between the EU and China may result in the necessary impetus to solidify a vision and a roadmap for our common future in the Anthropocene. Kalantzakos introduces a novel perspective and narrative on climate action leadership through an analysis of international relations. She argues that a close EU-China collaboration, which does not carry the baggage of an imbedded competition for supremacy, may best help the global community move towards a low carbon future and navigate the new challenges of the Anthropocene. Overall, Kalantzakos demonstrates how Europe and China, already strategic partners, can exercise global leadership in an area of crucial common interest through their web of relations, substantial development aid, and the use of soft power tools throughout the developing world. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, international relations, climate change and energy law and policy.

China’s recent climate-energy policy, an outcome of contemporary challenges, has generated conflict of interest amongst major stakeholders. Coupled with a boost in demand for oil, gas and coal, as well as a rapid growth in wind and solar power, it has not only affected domestic fossil fuel and renewable energy providers, but has also provoked a resource boom, affecting development pathways internationally. This book therefore seeks to examine the economic, social and ecological effects associated with China’s climate-energy policy. Assessing how the policy has been and will be formulated and implemented, it analyses the changing use of energy, CO2 emissions and GDP, as well as social and environmental impacts both domestically and internationally. It presents in-depth case studies on specific policies in China and on its resource exporting countries, such as Indonesia, Australia, Myanmar and Mongolia. At the same time, using quantitative data, it provides detailed input-output and applied computable general equilibrium analyses. Arguing that China has actively advanced its climate-energy policy to become a leader of global climate governance, it demonstrates that China ultimately relocates the cost of its climate-energy policy to resource exporting countries. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy, the environment and sustainability, as well as Chinese Studies and economics.

The United States and China are the world's top two energy consumers and, as of 2010, the two largest economies. Consequently, they have a decisive role to play in the world's clean energy future. Both countries are also motivated by related goals, namely diversified energy portfolios, job creation, energy security, and pollution reduction, making renewable energy development an important strategy with wide-ranging implications. Given the size of their energy markets, any substantial progress the two countries make in advancing use of renewable energy will provide global benefits, in terms of enhanced technological understanding, reduced costs through expanded deployment, and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to conventional generation from fossil fuels. Within this context, the U.S. National Academies, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), reviewed renewable energy development and deployment in the two countries, to highlight prospects for collaboration across the research to deployment chain and to suggest strategies which would promote more rapid and economical attainment of renewable energy goals. Main findings and concerning renewable resource assessments, technology development, environmental impacts, market infrastructure, among others, are presented. Specific recommendations have been limited to those judged to be most likely to accelerate the pace of deployment, increase cost-competitiveness, or shape the future market for renewable energy. The recommendations presented here are also pragmatic and achievable.

In Climate Change Law in China in Global Context seven climate change law scholars explain how the country's legal system is gradually being mobilized to support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in China and achieve adaptation to climate change. Currently there is very little English scholarship on the legal regime for climate change in China. This volume addresses this gap in the literature, and focuses on recent attempts by the country to build defences against the impacts of climate change and to meet the country's international obligations on mitigation. The authors are not only interested in China's laws on paper; rather, the book explains how these laws are implemented and integrated in practice and sheds light on China's current laws, laws in preparation, the changing standing of law relative to policy, and the further reforms that will be necessary in response to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This comprehensive and critical account of the Chinese legal system's response to the pressures of climate change will be an important resource for scholars of international law, environmental law, and Chinese law.

As the greatest coal-producing and consuming nation in the world, China would seem an unlikely haven for wind power. Yet the country now boasts a world-class industry that promises to make low-carbon technology more affordable and available to all. Conducting an empirical study of China's remarkable transition and the possibility of replicating their model elsewhere, Joanna I. Lewis adds greater depth to a theoretical understanding of China's technological innovation systems and its current and future role in a globalized economy. Lewis focuses on China's specific methods of international technology transfer, its forms of international cooperation and competition, and its implementation of effective policies promoting the development of a home-grown industry. Just a decade ago, China maintained only a handful of operating wind turbines—all imported from Europe and the United States. Today, the country is the largest wind power market in the world, with turbines made almost exclusively in its own factories. Following this shift reveals how China's political leaders have responded to domestic energy challenges and how they may confront encroaching climate change. The nation's escalation of its wind power use also demonstrates China's ability to leapfrog to cleaner energy technologies—an option equally viable for other developing countries hoping to bypass gradual industrialization and the "technological lock-in" of hydrocarbon-intensive energy infrastructure. Though setbacks are possible, China could one day come to dominate global wind turbine sales, becoming a hub of technological innovation and a major instigator of low-carbon economic change.