Steven Chu (energy secretary), recently traveled to china to press Chinese officials:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu warned in a speech at Tsinghua University, China’s top science university, that if humans did not reverse the rising pace of their emissions of greenhouse gases, more people would be displaced by rising sea levels in China than in any other country, even Bangladesh.

If China’s emissions of global warming gases keep growing at the pace of the last 30 years, the country will emit more such gases in the next three decades than the United States has in its entire history, said Mr. Chu, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.(via)

It is a tricky moral playground. The United States telling developing nations that they can’t do the same stupid things we did to achieve the same results we did. But tell them we must. Only because if they do the same dumb things we did, the earth will perish, taking them with it. If they were really smart, they would instead leap frog us. Become leaders in wind/solar/biomass/geothermal technology. Dominate these markets, make oil use a thing that is rare, sell these technologies back to us at a profit. China, India, and the other developing nations could, if they played their cards right, end up with a nation supplied by renewable energy, transferred over a smart grid, providing clean renewable power to a majority of the worlds population. They could then enact carbon cap and trade limits and economically bludgeon the rest of the world into complying (in the process becoming the next super powers). I have no desire to see communist China lead the world, I am merely pointing out a strategy that would be best for them.

Instead these countries seem to be doing the same stupidly imperialistic things that the US did. China is currently poking it’s nose all over the world trying to secure mineral and oil rights. These sort of imperialistic meddling inevitably lead to wars (*cough* the middle east *cough*), and suffering in the long term.

All hope is not lost, Chu, and the Obama administration seem to be working towards solutions.

“Fifty years from now, we do not want the world to lay the blame for environmental catastrophe at the feet of China,” Mr. Locke said.

Mr. Chu and Mr. Locke, who are both of Chinese heritage, called for the United States and China to work together to develop new technologies to generate clean energy and to improve energy efficiency.

After meeting Wednesday afternoon with senior Chinese officials, they announced that each country would put up $15 million for a joint research center on clean energy, with headquarters in each country at locations not yet decided.(via)

I can only hope that the future involves all nations working together to develop a lively and sustainable economic system based on renewable energy, and the spread and growth of knowledge for all humanity.

Read more here and here.