The U.N. climate change conference in Bali may be over, but China and India aren’t off the hook yet. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he will press China and India for further support fighting climate change during visits the two countries next month.
China, for one, needs the pressure because, while the country faces grave ecological consequences for its rapid industrialization, the country’s environmental enforcement agency, SEPA, has historically been pretty hands off.
Hopefully that’s changing somewhat. This year, SEPA rejected at least $91 billion in new factories and enterprises that failed to meet environmental standards—about 30% of all projects submitted to the agency. SEPA is also resorting to publicly shaming polluting corporations, which will hopefully prove effective as fines for polluting are so low that companies often opt to pay them instead of upgrading equipment.
