Second Guessing China's Environmental Commitment

Hell may have just frozen over. In an earlier entry I suggested that China would no more consider carbon emission quotas than vote to grant Taiwan independent entry into the UN. I may have to eat my words.

A move by Beijing to use financial incentives to deliver pollution cuts could see the introduction of a system of carbon emissions quotas and a carbon-trading exchange, the South China Morning Post reported. Writing in a magazine supervised by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said China had much to learn from international carbon-trading mechanisms. He also suggested a degree of price liberation for commodities such as coal, oil products, natural gas, water and electricity. On Monday, SEPA published the first group of 30 enterprises blacklisted under the "green credit" initiative, which bans banks from making loans to firms that fail to meet environmental standards.

We'll see if this is just lip service to placate protesters at home and international environmental nags. Most of the government's environmental table pounding has been hot air to date.