Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Urbanization and Geo-simulation, School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Urbanization and Geo-simulation, School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China; Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States.
Sci Total Environ. 2019 May 1;663:426-435. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.01.373. Epub 2019 Jan 29.
Modernization refers to the general trend of developmental progress that occurs within human societies. We now know that global warming, a result of carbon dioxide emissions, severely threatens the sustainability of human society. It is therefore of significant theoretical and practical implications that the scientific community more thoroughly investigate the impacts of modernization on CO emissions. Surprisingly, only a limited number of studies have addressed this topic previously. As the world's largest developing economy and carbon emitter, China faces the dual challenge of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 while realizing basic modernization by 2035. With the purpose of identifying the implications of China's 2035 modernization goal for its 2030 emission peak goal, this study explored the effects of modernization on carbon dioxide emissions in China. Using a comprehensive indicator system, five modernization indexes-addressing industrialization, agricultural modernization, informatization, urbanization, and ecological modernization-were estimated, along with carbon dioxide emissions, for the period 1997-2016, for 30 Chinese provinces. Panel data modeling was then used to examine the impacts of the five modernization indexes on CO emissions in China. The results demonstrate that industrialization, agricultural modernization, informatization, and urbanization exerted positive effects on CO emissions during the study period, suggesting these aspects of modernization led to increased carbon dioxide emissions. A negative correlation between ecological modernization and carbon dioxide emission was identified, indicating that ecological modernization helped to abate CO emissions. The findings emerging from this study hold significant implications for China's policy makers in promoting decarbonization, suggesting the utility of pursuing new-type industrialization, developing organic agriculture and eco-agriculture, popularizing electronic equipment with low power dissipation, building low-carbon cities, and promoting the ecology-oriented transformation of the modernization model.
现代化是人类社会发展进步的总体趋势。我们现在知道，二氧化碳排放导致的全球变暖，严重威胁着人类社会的可持续性。因此，科学界更彻底地研究现代化对二氧化碳排放的影响具有重要的理论和实践意义。令人惊讶的是，之前只有为数不多的研究探讨过这个话题。中国作为世界上最大的发展中经济体和碳排放国，面临着到 2030 年实现碳达峰、到 2035 年基本实现现代化的双重挑战。为了明确中国 2035 年现代化目标对 2030 年排放峰值目标的影响，本研究探讨了现代化对中国二氧化碳排放的影响。本研究使用综合指标体系，对 1997 年至 2016 年中国 30 个省份的五个现代化指标（工业化、农业现代化、信息化、城镇化和生态现代化）和二氧化碳排放量进行了估算，然后使用面板数据模型检验了五个现代化指标对中国 CO 排放的影响。结果表明，在研究期间，工业化、农业现代化、信息化和城镇化对 CO 排放产生了积极影响，表明这些方面的现代化导致了二氧化碳排放的增加。生态现代化与二氧化碳排放呈负相关，表明生态现代化有助于减少 CO 排放。本研究的结果对中国决策者在促进脱碳方面具有重要意义，表明追求新型工业化、发展有机农业和生态农业、普及低功耗电子设备、建设低碳城市以及推动现代化模式向生态导向转型等措施具有实用价值。
