Climate Change

BEIJING - In 2008 I started learning Chinese and in 2010 I moved to China to better understand the similarities between China and the United States on Climate Change. Perhaps I should follow the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change closely, but I don’t. This year COP 17 recently convened in Durban, South Africa. The most famous meetings are the 1997 COP 3 in Kyoto and the 2009 COP 15 in Copenhagen.

BEIJING - Below is a video and transcript for a video contest about climate change. I won't be winning any filmmaking awards any time soon, but at least hopefully it gives a glimpse into the world of China, particularly the synergy between the propaganda machine and green messages.

According to a report in Foreign Policy, sales of the Nano automobile in India have been disappointing.  Launched with great fanfare just two years ago and billed as the “world's cheapest car”, the Nano has been equal parts savvy marketing campaign and act of social responsibility on the part of its creator, Tata Motors.  A marked transition has been underway in Indian society as the population becomes more affluent and more urban.  Unfortunately, the infrastructure of most Indian cities has not been able to keep up;

BEIJING - Last Saturday I spent a moment staring at a picture of a naked man pulling a cart of coal in an underground mine. Throughout the 3 Shadows Gallery, designed by the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, you could see the juxtaposition of coal + ice (煤＋冰), a show produced by Asia Society’s Orville Schell.

BEIJING - In 2007 during the US Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton voiced support for funding a Woodstock museum. John McCain quipped in opposition, that he wasn’t there, he was all tied up. When I try to explain to myself why it is that American environmental groups are in China trying to make Chinese greener and not the other way around, I often use the same excuse – during the 1960s China was all tied up. While McCain was a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War (1964-1975), China was tied up in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) where intellectual rigor was stymied.

BEIJING - The last two weeks as I have begun to conduct interviews I have been asked why I have come to do research on environmentalism in China. Both times I have replied that I first came to China in 2008 to research Internet cafés, mistakenly thinking that Chinese had to go to Internet cafés to surf the Internet. Both times I said that my sense was that the habits of Chinese were more environmentally friendly than those of Americans and I hoped Americans could learn a thing or two. Yet both times I had a sense that I had to justify myself, and why I was doing this kind of research.

BEIJING - Perhaps as a kick in the pants I got an email from the editor of The Mantle. He suggested I look into an MSNBC article about Beijing pollution. The U.S. Embassy put out a statement that the air was “crazy bad” this past Friday. Friday night I had said to a friend of mine in broken Chinese that I could eat the pollution that past two days. I also had not been able to see airplanes fly over me, impressive as I’m just south of the Beijing capital airport.

BEIJING - “Do you think this book should be thought of like Super Girls or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon ?” A language partner and I were discussing the new release by Jonathan Watts titled When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind – Or Destroy It (Faber & Faber, 2010).

"This is not a decision that I've made lightly. But the bottom line is this: given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we're going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy," (President Barack Obama on his decision to allow oil and gas exploration off U.S. coasts, April 2, 2010).