China Criticized For Seizing Moral High Ground On Environment

Massive traffic pileup in Los Angeles, California

“If the U.S. isn’t careful, it might get lapped”

Is it just me, or is this ridiculous? I’m not a regular reader of Bryan Walsh, but he seems to be TIME magazine’s writer for all things environmental.

TIME’s Bryan Walsh says China “managed to seize the moral high ground – fairly or not” in last week’s climate talks.

Walsh points the finger at China–this time, strangely, not because of China’s refusal to be held accountable for the environmental price of its economic development, but because of pretty much the opposite: “seiz[ing] the moral high ground” during the talks.

China, vowing to do something about its (relatively recently-turned-massive) damage to the environment. So what’s bad? Apparently, in the fact that it makes China look like the “climate good guy” while the U.S. has long been viewed as “the global bad guy,” in no small part thanks to former president Dubbya.

And so now that China is acknowledging its role in global warming, and vowing to do something to curb its damage, Walsh whines that it’s not it’s fair because China was never held to the Kyoto Protocol. Neither was the U.S., since it never agreed to sign it: The difference is, as the world’s longstanding largest polluter, the U.S. was expected by the world to commit. China, on the other hand, wasn’t held to such a standard. Unfair, unfair, unfair, screams Walsh.

He goes on to pit China against the U.S. in the apparent sandbox that is the discussion on global environmental issues and accountability:

The world knew the U.S. would change when President Barack Obama took office, given the importance he placed during his campaign on climate change. But coming out of the UN’s high-level meeting on climate change on Sept. 22, it is China that has managed to seize the moral high ground – fairly or not. President Hu Jintao told the UN that China would increase the share of renewable and nuclear power in its energy supply to 15% by 2020, plant 40 million hectares of forest by 2020, increase investment in a greener economy and reduce its carbon intensity – the amount of economic value it gets per unit of power – by a “notable margin” by 2020. Many of those domestic goals had already been announced, but the tone of Hu’s speech made an impact on his audience. “I think China has provided impressive leadership,” said Al Gore after Hu’s talk.

Score: China, 1; U.S., 0

Plastic toy parts pile in Guangdong province, China, by "Manufactured Landscapes" photographer Edward Burtynsky

Walsh concludes with a brief explanation of the “Panda Standard,” China’s newly proposed domestic carbon-trading program, flipping one final finger to China with his semi-mocking tone and implying that the voluntary nature of the program suggests that China’s hyping up something on the world stage that it won’t actually follow through with.

In Walsh’s eyes, it seems, global environmental crises aren’t something to be solved through cooperation and a common goal, but a winner-takes-all race to the finish line to see which country can more spectacularly (and literally) flex its power first. Just what exactly is his point, anyway, and why on earth does he need to be so whiny, accusatory, and blindly patriotic in making it?

On another, unrelated note, have TIME’s copy-editors gone on holiday? Or do they just refuse to work online? What’s with the shoddy line-editing in that article?