The biggest city you’ve never heard of

Sometimes a person can spend so long working on problems in one’s own backyard that you forget that climate change is a global phenomenon.

I remember being at a conference in 2005 when a speaker from China stood at the front of the room and announced that in the previous year, China had built about 80GW of generating plant. The year after, it was going to be 100 GW. And after that, 120 GW. Oh, and most of that electricity is coming from dirty, high carbon coal.* For comparison’s sake, the UK has a net generating capacity of about 74GW. So it was no wonder that we heard this – after three days of discussing how to achieve 5 to 10% savings in European countries – the entire room let out a sigh like we’d been punched in the collective stomach. As a colleague of mine poetically said,

‘We saved 5%’
‘Oh well, we saved 10%’
China! Oh bollocks.

While these figures are daunting enough by themselves, the scale of the challenge doesn’t really sink in until you read about how this phenomenal growth affects the daily lives of people in these countries. Booming economies mean that more and more people are leaving the countryside to seek work in urban areas; not only does this have dramatic social implications but it also changes both the demand for energy services and the way in which these needs are met. These issues are beautifully illustrated in an article publish last March by the Guardian, titled “Invisible City”.

After reading about the lives of eleven people in the biggest city you’ve never heard of, it may be tempting to say that the small actions we might take in our own lives are futile and insignificant. I would disagree – if anything, it highlights the importance of doing whatever we can, wherever we can.

* There’s a great graph of this growth available at the IEA (PDF). Also the Asian Development Bank just published a report about how rapid growth in Asia will impact both emissions of both greenhouse gases and local pollutants.

Come again?

Anyone know what the heck the Observer’s talking about here?

The Communities Minister, Ruth Kelly, will tomorrow use her first major speech on environmental issues to lay out a ‘timetable’ to meet Brown’s target and make Britain the first country in the world to ensure that new homes emit no more carbon than they use.

I think what they were trying to say was that dwellings should be zero net carbon emitters. Doesn’t really come across though does it?