KEY POINTS:
Two recent news reports have underscored China's voracious appetite for oil and the impact of unrestrained burning of coal and other fossil fuels on global climate change.
Both point to the need for New Zealand and Australia to use their influence to help bring China and India into the International Energy Agency, the leading international organisation for energy research and co-operation.
China's rise as an energy titan was in the spotlight again earlier this month when it reported that oil imports surged to a record level in March despite sky-high prices. China shipped in an average of just over four million barrels a day, nearly as much as Japan - the world's second biggest economy.
Meanwhile, a research team at the University of California has concluded that China's global warming emissions have been underestimated and probably passed those of the United States, long the world's top polluter, in the last two years. The report, to be published next month, warns that unless China radically changes its energy policies, its increases in greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions that rich nations are struggling to make under the Kyoto Protocol by the time it ends in 2012.
These are just two bits of an increasingly alarming picture that suggests we may be fighting a losing battle to combat climate change. Of course, it would be unfair to expect major emerging economies, like those of China and India, to rein in their emissions unless advanced industrialised nations are prepared to lead the way.
Nearly all emerging economies have much lower per capita emission levels than rich countries. They are also responsible for a much smaller portion of the world's accumulated greenhouse gases. They want to narrow the development gap with advanced economies and provide their people with better living standards. This divergence makes it very difficult to reach global agreement on how to tackle climate change and share the costs.
Yet Asia will be among the regions hit hardest by climate change. Scientific research presented in Vienna this week found that sea levels around the world could rise by as much as 1.5m by the end of this century as a result of global warming.
This is substantially more than the maximum rise of 43cm forecast by scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their landmark report late last year to the United Nations and member states. The new research takes into account the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, as well as the melting of mountain glaciers and the thermal expansion of oceans as the world warms.
Nearly 40 per cent of Asians live within 100km of the coast. Coastal zones, especially densely populated mega-deltas in South, Southeast and Northeast Asia, will be at greatest risk due to increased flooding from the sea and storm surges. Some of these deltas will also be at risk from flooding coming down the rivers that flow through the deltas to the sea, as glaciers in the Himalayas and on China's Qinghai-Tibetan plateau melt, unleashing too much water at first and then too little for the millions in China, India and Bangladesh who depend on the flow.
The international negotiations to mitigate climate change and prevent it from causing a global catastrophe aim to reach a deal by the end of next year. This will be a tough target to achieve. But it would help if China and India became full members of the International Energy Agency, the IEA, because energy use and climate change are two sides of the same coin.
With 27 industrialised oil importers in its ranks, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Canada, the US and European nations, the IEA has six basic aims. They include developing alternative energy sources to oil, natural gas and coal; using energy more efficiently; promoting international collaboration on energy technology and helping to integrate environmental and energy policies. These are all areas in which China and India have a strong interest.
At the invitation of the IEA, their senior energy officials and experts took part for the first time last December in the work of the main policy committees of the Paris-based IEA. The co-operation between the IEA and Asia's two emerging energy giants is expected to intensify this year. According to Nobuo Tanaka, the head of the IEA, the ultimate objective is Chinese and Indian membership of the group.
The sooner this happens the better. There would still be a long way to go in the climate battle, but it would certainly help by showing that major energy users are prepared to work together to clean up their mess.
* The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a climate change specialist at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.
