China’s Import of Wastes and Its Implications

Abstract

The trade of wastes in the world has been increasing and China has become the largest importer of wastes. This paper examines the import trend of different wastes and finds out that the total import volume to China approved by the Chinese government keeps increasing and the illegal trade can not be banned despite repeated prohibitions; therefore, China is not only “a world factory”, but actually “a global garbage dump”. In order to well understand the implications of wastes import, this paper further analyzes the resource and environmental effects and risks of different wastes imports as well as the strong driving force of wastes imports. Based on these detailed analysis and solid data, policy recommendations are put forward to reduce the demand for raw materials, to further strengthen the inspection of and supervision over the international trade of the wastes that can be used as raw materials by using the life cycle analysis and risk analysis, to improve the environmental standards and strengthen the disposal capacity, to re-export the raw materials produced from the imported wastes, to develop the long-term planning for the import of wastes and to promote international cooperation.     

An International Comparative Analysis on China’s Economic Growth and the Convergence in Energy Intensity Gap and Its Economic Mechanism

Abstract

In this paper, the authors have empirically analyzed the convergence in per capita GDP gap and the convergence in the variation of energy intensity with respect to the change of per capita GDP between China and eight developed countries. Then, the authors run a regression on the impact of decisive factors of economic growth on energy intensity and its change, so as to find out the economic mechanism of energy intensity gap changing with respect to the variation of economic growth. This study concludes that: First, there is a convergence in per capita GDP gap between China and the eight developed countries. With the convergence in per capita GDP gap, the energy intensity gap between China and eight different countries also converge, and the convergence rate of the latter is faster than that of the former, i.e. if the per capita GDP gap between China and the eight developed countries decreases by 1%, the energy intensity gap between them will correspondingly decrease by 1.552%. Second, the energy intensity decreases with the improvement of industrial structure, the rising of energy prices, the advances of technology, and the expansion of investment in fixed assets, and it slightly increases with the increase of FDI. Third, the energy intensity gap between China and eight developed countries narrows with the lessening of the difference in fixed assets investment, energy prices, and technological progress between China and eight developed countries, yet increases with the narrowing of the difference in FDI, and has no significant correlation with the difference in industrial structure. Fourth, the narrowing of difference in per capita GDP between China and the eight developed countries can result in the lessening of energy intensity gap, whose economic mechanism is that the decisive factors, such as difference in investment, technology, and the competition mechanism of prices, which can determine the difference in economic growth, can significantly affect the energy intensity gap.     

Resources and international climate change policy gridlock

Few other policy zones are as complex as the issue of climate change. If the more pessimistic projections of climate change doom are correct, then the failure to address the issue is likely to be catastrophic and irreversible. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted the potential extinction of many species and that the existence of small-island and other vulnerable countries will be threatened if business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions continue. Climate change is a transboundary problem and requires unprecedented levels of cooperation between states and serious and sustained responses from major emitters. However, the growing demand and consumption of natural resources for continued energy security and cornucopian economic growth have undermined the outcomes of international climate change negotiations. It is argued here that there is a strong connection between the major emitters’ positions at United Nations’ climate talks, their possessions, dependence and consumption of natural resources, and the continued undermining of international climate change policy for unsustainable growth. This paper assesses the resource politics of the US, China, India, Canada, Russia, and Saudi Arabia and their positions at climate talks to show the link between lack of climate change policy progress and the positions of these main players.     

A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Duty in Environmental Communication

This article examines the framing of environmental risks and natural disasters in factual entertainment television programs of the early 2000s, a hybrid form combining techniques from documentary with techniques such as dramatic reconstructions and computer-generated imagery from entertainment genres. Using qualitative frame analysis, it examines a range of factual entertainment television programs' framing of environmental risk and natural disasters in terms of their attitudes, representation of human participants and visual composition. The article considers the similarities and differences in the framing of natural disasters as factual entertainment compared to the framing of natural disasters in news, documentary and fiction film. It argues that such programs offer representational frames both consonant with and distinct from other media and concludes that they problematically offer a predominantly fatalistic response to environmental risk, constructing natural disasters as voyeuristic spectacles for vicarious entertainment.     

The Flood Myth in the Age of Global Climate Change

When released, The Day After Tomorrow was widely described by critics and the movie's creators as a pro-environmentalist film. This essay argues that The Day After Tomorrow articulates a variation of apocalyptic discourse identified as a flood myth. The authors conclude that this version of the flood myth largely undermines contemporary environmental discourse that attempts to generate public activism in addressing ecological problems, by replacing an emphasis on human efficacy with symbolic vindication and exchanging collective effort for individual survivalism. The film thus serves as a cautionary tale about the potential consequences of contemporary mythic discourse presented as supporting environmental activism.     

Greenwashing Consumption: The Didactic Framing of ExxonMobil's Energy Solutions

Corporate advertising campaigns increasingly use environmental frames to promote their products and processes, many of which are neither sustainable nor environmentally friendly. This study examines ExxonMobil's recent efforts at green advertising, focusing specifically on their widely aired “Energy Solutions” television advertisements. We argue that ExxonMobil's use of a didactic, greenwashed frame stifles criticism and discourages examination of ideologies of consumption by exploiting the ethos of the scientist and highlighting technological solutions to problems that are deeply tied to a culture of consumerism. The definition of green energy is controlled by those with the power to generate persuasive public messages about the sources and production of energy. Counterframes, however, can be employed to turn a questioning eye upon the solutions advanced by ExxonMobil. We issue a call for green frames that help citizens and consumers critically examine the ecological integrity of all means of energy production, and that call attention to the ways in which the greenwashing of research and development initiatives can dissuade necessary action, including reduction of US energy consumption.     

Researching Visual Environmental Communication

In 2008, we published a journal paper arguing that while scholarly work on media representations of environmental issues had made substantial progress in textual analysis, there had been much less work on visual representations. This special edition has a number of aims in this respect. It seeks to mark out where there has been progress since 2008, and the papers in this collection represent some of the fresh and exciting high quality scholarly work now emerging on an expanding number of topics and using different methods. We argue that we need to think more openly about what we mean by “the visual.” We begin by placing research into visual representations of the environment into the wider trajectory of visual studies research. We then proceed to review key trends in visual environmental communication research and to delineate core dimensions, contexts and sites of visual analysis.     

自然资源的库兹涅茨曲线:来自中国省级面板数据的证据

本文运用1978-2011年我国30个省份的面板数据,对我国省级层面资源丰裕度与经济增长的关系进行了检验.研究发现,我国省级层面资源丰裕度与经济增长之间的关系并不是单一线性的,而是一种非线性的动态演变关系.当使用其他资源丰裕度和经济增长的指标进行稳健性检验,这种强烈的非线性关系仍然存在.更进一步,对自然资源作用经济增长的机制进行实证检验,结果显示:长期中丰裕的自然资源会通过降低人力资本和物质资本的投资对经济结构产生“诅咒”;恶化政府与市场的关系、阻碍非国有经济的发展、中介组织的发育和法律的完善等,从而对政治制度产生“诅咒”.     

经济增长、市场化改革与土地违法

在当前中国经济快速增长和市场化改革逐步推进的过程中,始终面临着较为严重的土地违法问题;土地违法行为的主体不仅包括企事业单位和令人,更涉及各级地方政府以及农村集体组织.为深入了解经济增长与市场化改革对不同主体土地违法行为的影响,本文进行了初步的理论探讨,并运用全国层面的统计数据开展了相应的实证分析.结果表明,随着经济增长速度的加快,政府和企业的土地违法面积均显著增加;而土地市场化水平的提高则能有效减少土地违法的案件数.进一步地,经济增长和市场化改革对各级政府以及企事业单位、个人和农村集体组织土地违法行为的影响也存在一定的差异.本文的研究也指出,为有效控制土地违法行为的扩大,中国政府仍需采取转变经济增长方式、稳步推进市场化改革、引导企事业单位有序用地和不断完善土地督察制度等措施.     

中国城市用地增长极限规模测算

快速城市化出现的城市建设用地扩张问题,受到人们广泛关注,借鉴发达国家经验,我国需要测算一个极限区间值进行自上而下的总量控制,以促进最严格耕地保护制度和节约用地制度的落实.但是如何测算这个极限规模一直没有得到很好解决.本文提出了一个常规方法组合和关键指标相结合的技术思路来尝试解决这个问题.研究首先对城市用地扩展规模的影响因子进行了分析,讨论了城市人口数量和GDP分别与建成区面积相关性,确定了城市人口数量对建成区面积影响更大;在此基础上,采用逻辑斯蒂模型,依据我国1950-2010年经济数据,对城市化水平进行预测;用自回归分布滞后模型,依据1951-2010年全国人口数据对未来人口规模进行预测,并分为三个方案对结果进行了讨论;最后按照城市用地分类与规划建设用地标准,以节约集约用地为原则,将人均城市用地规模取值控制在65.0-115.0 m2,计算城市用地扩展极限规模.结果表明,到2045年,中国的城市化预测水平为79.99％,在中国人口增长控制较好的情况下,人口规模将达到14.97亿人,城市用地扩展规模为77 857.38-137 747.70 km1;若中国人口达到有关研究的预测峰值16亿人,中国城市化水平稳定在80％,城市用地扩展极限规模将会是83 200.00-147 200.00 km2.综合以上分析,未来我国的城市建设用地总量应在7.8万km2到14.7万km2之间.