Re: [Marxism] The Vulnerable Planet

[Jon Flanders <jonathan.flanders@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

We have a race here, folks, between Chinese oil demand and melting
glaciers. And the winner is....?

Jon Flanders


CHINA REELS UNDER FUEL SHORTAGES AS DEMAND BOOMS
2003-11-26

Inefficiencies stem from move to a market system

Many of China's major cities—including the country's economic showcase,
Shanghai—are struggling with fuel shortages in the face of skyrocketing
demand for oil products, RFA reports.

A diesel fuel shortage in Shanghai is the latest sign of trouble in
China's energy market as the country's demand for oil races far ahead of
forecasts.

Filling stations have run short of diesel throughout the past month in
Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as well as Guangdong Province, according
to reports in the official Chinese media. Supplies of gasoline are also
said to be tight.

The news came at the same time as a report by the official Xinhua news
agency that the Chinese oil companies Sinopec and PetroChina had
announced plans to export a record amount of diesel fuel to other
countries this year in an effort to keep domestic prices high.

Analysts said the contradiction highlighted inefficiencies in China's
domestic markets.

"To have these two news reports side by side would seem to imply that
the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing," Robert Ebel,
energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, told RFA in a recent interview.

"Some shortages may be more local in nature, may be a problem with the
distribution system," he told RFA's special correspondent, Michael
Lelyveld.

Others see the trouble as the result of a collision between China's old
system of central planning and its transition to a market economy. The
government still limits the number of fuel suppliers and the retail
prices they can charge, so they try to make money by selling abroad.

"Well, I guess this reflects the fact that China is in between the plan
and the market," Philip Andrews-Speed, China energy expert at the
University of Dundee, told RFA. "Twenty years ago, under the plan, the
diesel would just have been shipped there. Now, you're not in the plan,
but neither, it appears, is it a pure market."

He added that while Shanghai could not buy Chinese diesel, it still had
the foreign currency necessary to buy diesel from Japan, South Korea or
Singapore. "Quite why it isn't is not clear," he said.

There are signs that the diesel shortages in eastern China could be the
first of many. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) has
recently raised its estimate of worldwide oil consumption, citing the
surge in China's growth as a major factor.

The IEA said China would pass Japan to become the world's second-largest
oil importer next year.

Rapid growth in car ownership, boosted by rising urban incomes and the
growing availability of auto finance, falling prices following China's
accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and booming factory
output have all had a strong impact on energy demand.

Beijing has made attempts recently to build up reserves of crude oil, to
protect it against external economic shocks like the war in Iraq, and to
diversify its supplies, reducing its dependency on the Middle East, but
without much success so far.##### Source: Radio Free Asia.

Billions Face Water Shortages as Glaciers Melt-WWF
Thu Nov 27,12:54 PM ET
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MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - The world's glaciers could melt within a
century if global warming (news - web sites) accelerates, leaving
billions of people short of water and some islanders without a home,
environmentalists said Thursday.


AFP/EPA/File Photo

        

"Unless governments take urgent action to prevent global warming,
billions of people worldwide may face severe water shortages as a result
of the alarming melting rate of glaciers, the WWF group said in a
report.

It said human impact on the climate was melting glaciers from the Andes
to the Himalayas, bringing longer-term threats of higher sea levels that
could swamp island states.

Officials from 180 nations will meet in Milan on December 1-12 to
discuss international efforts to rein in a rise in global temperatures,
blamed by scientists on emissions of gases from factories and cars that
are blanketing the planet.

"Simulations project that a 4.0 Celsius (8.0 F) rise in temperature
would eliminate nearly all of the world's glaciers" by the end of the
century, WWF said.

Himalayan glaciers feed seven great rivers of Asia that run through
China and India, the world's most populous nations, ensuring a
year-round water supply to two billion people.

WWF said that nations most at risk also included Ecuador, Peru and
Bolivia, where melt water from Andean glaciers supplies millions during
dry seasons.

Island states like Tuvalu in the Pacific, meanwhile, could be submerged
by rising sea levels triggered by melting glaciers.

Sea levels could rise even further if two of the world's largest ice
caps, in Antarctica and Greenland, melt substantially, though the report
left them out of its reckoning because of their unpredictability.

Glaciers are ancient rivers of packed snow that creep through the
landscape, shaping the planet's surface.