How Green Can China Get? -- And How California Is Helping

All the talk seems to be about China’s leaders refusing to commit to cutting carbon emissions, but what if they did?

Could they actually make the promised cutbacks?

Robert Collier, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggests that despite despite its image as an all-powerful dictatorship, with its economic boom the Chinese government has “lost so much political and regulatory power that it has been unable to force provincial and municipal authorities to obey environmental laws.”

And despite the Bush administration’s harping on China to commit to reductions, the idea that the U.S. would help China strengthen and enforce environmental laws is, as Collier says, “sheer anathema.”

But all in not bleak. Behind the scenes, scientists and policy advisors from California have been helping China learn from the state’s successes in cutting emissions despite federal inaction -- helping Chinese officials set up pro-conservation electricity rate structures, clean-energy technology tax incentives, tighter vehicle emissions regulations, and more.

Read it all here. It’s a fascinating mix of optimism, pessimism and irony.