China climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua laments ‘severe’ pollution
China’s top negotiator at international climate talks said on Tuesday that air pollution in his own country – the world’s biggest carbon emitter – is harming its citizens.
“China indeed is suffering from severe air pollution,” said Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning body.
Smoggy conditions have “now become the norm which has severely affected the mental and physical health of the Chinese people”, he added – but voiced hope for improvement in the next decade.
China is also in the process of industrialisation, urbanisation and agricultural modernisation, so we are still in an uphill process
Xie, speaking to reporters before global climate talks in Poland next week, attributed China’s air problems to the country’s “obsolete development model”, its “unreasonable industrial and energy structure” and discharge of pollutants by some companies “in a very extensive way”.
The root cause, he added, is the “use of fossil fuels”.
Pollution is becoming a major source of public anger in China, and authorities vowed in September to reduce levels of atmospheric pollutants in Beijing and other major cities by as much as 25 per cent by 2017 to try to improve their dire air quality.
The government said pollution levels would be cut by slowing the growth of coal consumption so that its share of China’s energy sources fell to 65 per cent by 2017.
China is the world’s biggest coal consumer and is forecast to account for more than half of global demand next year.