china building more power plants

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china is mow building about two power stations every week, the top climate change official at the uk foreign office said. rich nations had to set example of low caon development for china to follow. Mr ashton 's statement came as a new report suggested that china may have already become the world's biggest polluter, the netherland environmental assesment agency said china's co2 emissions had risen by 5% last year, compared with 3% in the US it's massive challenge, mr ashton told hte bbc folowing a recent trip to china, we need to convince china that they dont have to make a choice between prosperity and protecting the climate, we need to help them towards a low carbon future there is also a moral case, most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been put there by developed countries without the constraint of having to worry about hte climate. that means we should bear the leadig edge of responsibility. mr ashton added that the chinese had put out their first climate strategy , in a effort to get to grips with their emissions and use energy efficiently he pointed out that much of china's emissions growth was being driven by conusmers inthe west buying chinese goods, and noted that china's emissions per person were still well below those of rich nations it's estimated that the average american still pollutes etween five and six tmes more than the average chinese person. climate sceptics in the uk have been asking why britons shoudl switch off lights, turn down central heating and avoid foreign flights in order to save carbon when the chinese are increasing emissions at their current rate responsibility for china's soaring emissions lies not just in beijing bu also in washington , said greenpeace uk direct john sauven all we've done is export a great slice of the west's carbon footprint to china and today we see the result lets us not forget that the average chinese emits just 3.5 tonnes of co2 per year, whereas britons emit nearly 10 tones and amercian 20 tones. the west moved its manufacturing base to china knowing it was vastly more polluting than japan, europe or the uk , no environmental conditions were attached to this move in fact the only thing manufacturers were interested was the price of labour, the trend kept the price of our products down but at the cost of soaring greenhouse gas emission, long term, this policy has been a climate disaster we shold export lean energy technology to china to increase low carbon and renewable energy take up so the products we import have a smaller carbon footprint