Isn't it kind of redundant to talk about what an authoritarian regime should do about anything, its not like they're looking for advice nor are they at the mercy of civilian pressure or NGO/lobbyists.

You can say they have to stop polluting until you are blue in the face, it won't make a lick of difference unless the CCP decides it should do something.

International pressure / sanctions? Yeah right. Who's going to cut themselves off of the chinese-growth gravy train?

I think the real danger is that when it comes down to a showdown of who gets the oil when it becomes scarce - China or the USA? I doubt either of them would get into a serious conflict if they could avoid it, but it doesn't mean shortages won't be felt on either side or on both.

A number of important points raised in this post. In my view, though, you are taking a rather stark approach:

On the authoritarian nature of the regime -- It's a mistake to think of China as a Stalinist dictatorship. Sure it's authoritarian, but the CCP has around 70m odd members, and its feedback mechanisms are very strong - going beyond the party membership - and are getting stronger year by year. It's possible to point to any number of incidents where they've ignored "public opinion", but on the whole they're quite good at surfing with the public mood.

By and large if you asked the Chinese population to rank their priorities, economic growth and jobs trumps the environment every time.
Having said that, you only have to live in Beijing (where most of the central leadership spend most of their time) to realise that there comes a stage at which you need to start doing more about the environment. Air pollution in Beijing is horrific, and deteriorating despite government efforts to clean up ahead of the Olympics. As a result, there have been a lot of very real moves to push forward the environmental agenda, and environmental NGOs have a lot more political space in which to be active than virtually any other type of NGO. Economically developed areas are, as one would expect, pushing to clean themselves up much more than poorer ones are.

As the international world doesn't have to do anything to push China to think more about the environment, because it's such an important domestic priority already, sanctions are irrelevant, although China will doubtless try and see if it can get other countries to pay for cleaning up its act (via the carbon emissions trading schemes for example).

The potential for oil clashes is an interesting question, but given that China doesn't really have to capacity to project its military might to the regions where the oil is, it's not going to be rattling sabers with the US over the Middle East or Africa for many years to come. The Chinese government has used economic inducements to establish a foothold in emerging oil producers such as Angola, but Western oil corporations are also active there, and have a considerable technological edge. In the Gulf, the only significant equity stake secured by a foreign corporation in recent years has been by ExxonMobil in Abu Dhabi. China is trying hard to get into Iran, but it faces the same unappealing contract terms as Western firms.

re: Chinese military intervention
Currently the US is also having trouble projecting it's military might in the oil rich regions. And one thing China certainly has is limitless supplies of military personnel, who given the current climate for military action, are probably less likely to complain about being sent out for duty than western soldiers.

re: Chinese pollution
Isn't it also true that the growth in China is largely due to massive exports to the west. So in effect while the West "may" choose to adopt carbon friendly regulation, the effect of this is, and continue to be to reduce their own manufacturing and push it abroad to China. So China while being a very large consumer in its own right is also polluting on behalf of us. Check the bottom of any child's toy, and see where its made.

re: Pollution reduction
The only real option is to engage with China in renewables research. Given the way China is keen to take a leading role, as in Space Science, it would be most helpful to encourage China to mass produce, for all sorts of global applications, low tech renewable energy solutions like 5Kw Wind generators, small Gorlov helical turbines and basic solar solutions.

I feel China is a misrepresented country. People complain about its human rights, in particular its one child per family policy. It is a clumsy policy. But it is not evil as some people would like to shout.

Hitler wanted German women to have many children and he wanted Living space for all these extra Germans to live in. Hitler therefore invaded other countries as part of his scheme.

China wishes to reduce its population. The consequence of this will be to have less demand on resoures including energy. China's detractors should look at the big picture. I feel they wish to eat there cake and still have more left to enjoy. China bashing is a very popular sport.

China is builing vast Hydro electricity schemes. Again its detractors complain that human rights are squashed to facilitate the schemes.

So lets look at just these two points for a minute, China has reduced potential demand on energy by controlling its population. China is investing in renewable energy schemes. We should be thankfull.

Yet we complain about Human rights.

And if China announed that they were to build more Nuclear Power stations, what then would people complain about? I can assure you it will not be that there fossil fuel demand will come down and consequently CO2 production would drop.

Give China A Break