China’s aggressive push to “green” its economy and become the world leader in renewable energy is admired by many commentators in the West. Those admirers need to look again. The country’s solar panel industry, which went from zero to become the world’s largest in five years, has crashed, with most producers now suffering from negative profit margins, soaring debt levels and idle factories. China’s experience with wind power is little different. China’s green crash is a textbook example of what happens when central planners substitute their economic decrees for the complex supply and demand decisions of a market.—Patricia Adams and Brady Yauch, Financial Post 9 December 2013

Britain may have to abandon its climate change targets if other countries failed to cut emissions, the chairman of the ­government’s advisory body has said. Lord Deben (formerly the Conservative Environment Secretary John Gummer) said: “There is no point in you doing your bit for climate change if no one else is doing it.”—Ben Webster, The Times , 11 December 2013

China issued its first nation-wide blueprint for adapting to climate change, as governments around the world shift their efforts from focusing solely on curbing global warming to minimizing its impact on people and the environment. “The government needs to decide what are the most cost-effective measures and which measures will produce the most significant impact. China doesn’t have that much money or resources to address everything on this list.”—Wayne Ma, The Wall Street Journal 10 December 2013

The government will break the law if it waters down its plans to reduce greenhouse gases, its advisers say. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says there is no legal, environmental or economic case for lowering the fourth UK “carbon budget”, set in 2011… Benny Peiser from the climate sceptic group GWPF told BBC News: “Given the EU’s manifest reluctance to follow Britain’s lead, there is no chance that the government will adopt new unilateral targets until and unless there is a legally binding agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris.”—Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 11 December 2013

The Committee on Climate Change mistakenly believe that the UK’s post-2022 CO2 targets are legally binding under the Climate Change Act. This is not the case. When the fourth carbon budget was agreed in 2011, the government confirmed that these targets were conditional on the EU adopting similar targets. George Osborne has stated categorically that Britain will not “cut carbon emissions faster than our fellow countries in Europe.” Given the EU’s manifest reluctance to follow Britain’s lead, there is no chance that the government will adopt new unilateral targets. The decision on post-2020 CO2 targets is likely to be postponed until and unless there is a legally binding agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris. –Benny Peiser, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 11 December 2013

Britain should press ahead with fracking, the chairman of the Government’s climate change advisory body said yesterday. Lord Deben dismissed claims by green groups that fracking would cause significant damage to the environment, adding that Britain needed to drill shale wells to reduce reliance on foreign imports of fossil fuel.—Ben Webster, The Times, 11 December 2013

Will temperatures on Earth be dropping until the year 2100 to Little Ice Age levels, as Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, a scientist at Germany’s Saarland University, predicted last week? Or will the temperatures only plunge until 2060, as Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory, recently predicted? Or has the cooling already begun, and might it end as soon as 2030, as claimed by Anastasios Tsonis, head of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at the University of Wisconsin?—Lawrence Solomon, Huffington Post, 10 December 2013

Spain changed environmental rules to speed approvals on industrial projects from pig farms to oil rigs and for the first time will regulate shale drilling. “This is a step in the right direction,” Lars Hubert, exploration manager for shale at San Leon Energy Plc (SLE), said by telephone from Poland. “It should make permitting easier.” The Dublin-based company has four Spanish licenses to prospect for shale rock and six more awaiting approval.—Todd White, Bloomberg, 10 December 2013