The Next Energy Crisis?

摘要

In the 1980s, the Chinese government bought scores of cast-off Western refrigerator factories to boost the number of Beijing households with refrigerators from 6 to 60 percent. Unfortunately, the obsolete refrigerators guzzled electricity and used chlorofluorocarbons—chemicals now being phased out worldwide. Thus, a well-meant development effort wasted half a billion dollars on needless power plants, created shortages of power, degraded the ozone layer, and worsened climatic change.