Should Al Gore (or Anyone Else) be Praising Green China?
Friday, September 25, 2009 20:16If there is one thing that continually bothers me, it is when people (leaders in particular) selectively cherry pick a few data points and come up with a broad stroke ASSessment of what is occurring on the ground. It is of course a global phenomenon, but in the realm of green, carbon, and rhetoric, there is a huge amount of this occuring whenever someone involves China.
… and in a recent speach at teh U.N. Al Gore praised China and Japan on their climate leadership, saying:
“I think that China has provided impressive leadership,” Gore told reporters.
Predicting that China would take further action if global negotiations on a new treaty succeed, Gore said: “I think the glass is very much half full with China.
“It’s not widely known in the rest of the world but China in each of the last two years has planted two and half times more trees than the entire rest of the world put together,” he said.
A quote that is borderline ridiculous, and shows how far we have to go in developing a real understanding of what this is all about.
Yes, China has planted mor trees than anyone (don’t forget why they had to), and yes, they have invested more money in wind farms and solar fields than anyone this year, but does that give them “leadership” status? Is that what it takes? Or, perhaps should we take a more holistic look at this?
Before I go on though, I would like to say that I have witnessed an amazing amount of change in China in my time here, and the people behind that rightly deserve credit for the wrk they have done. Investments and planning are being made in a way that I see long term positive returns, and my gut feeling is that there are going to be many more positive steps to be made.
However, while the leadership may be “leading” in certain sectors investment,they are certainly lagging in many other areas: Wildlife protection, water management, food security and contamination, air pollution, energy efficiency (not intensity.. efficiency), environmental awareness, citizen participation, enforcement of environmental laws, and so on.
Areas far more important than the investments made in clean technologies, especially of those technologies are not connected to the grid, or are burning out within months of being installed.. and were I Spain or Germany, I would also hav ea bone to pick about China’s “leadership” on energy supply. After all, they have been installing renewable energies into their grid on a percentage that China cannot match (regardless of gross amount), so does that make them the “leaders”?
It is a situation that bothers me not because someone is a leader, but because it is clear that no one is really “leading” if you look at the entire picture…
At the end of the day, and where I am going to end my post, is that for us to make real progress and give a credible amount of credit, the picture needs to be looked at holistically. There has been a lot of progress in many areas of the world, and in many areas of sustainability, but we need to stop patting each other on the back like this because at the end of the day even China admits that it is not doing enough to stop the world’s temperatures from rising another 2 degrees.
… and if that happens, the only winners in that scenario are the cockroaches.
gregorylent says:
September 25th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
cannot tell your true pov, some emotional reaction seems present …
the only country i have been in where there is public discussion about the relationship of cities with the land around them is china .. sharing of water, electricity, food, transportation, etc … certainly doesn’t happen in india, or chicago …
there is a holistic thinking in china not present in many, if any, countries … and show me the manufacturing encouragements for alternative tech in usa … europe has some good understanding of these issues, but i think china is smarter than most countries about the need to do something now, and they seem to be doing it …
“leadership” is just media talk, action is what counts ..
Rich says:
September 26th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Gregory
a bit of emotion – frustration in this case – is what typically provides some motivation to write.
I would agree that there is a greater sense of awareness on a holistic approach, or at least the need for it, however the compromises here are much larger than they would be in other countries.
Part of this comes back to the lack of public process that occurs, and part of it comes back to the lack of enforcement. Both are issues that are a benefit at times as things can get built faster, but over the long term, these are hurdles that will need to be radically altered before China makes significant improvements on the demand side of the equation.
R
hotaruSTAR16 says:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:58 am
China’s economic growth has always been at odds with the environment. Glad to hear that they are making efforts to find middle ground, although, as you have stressed, we need to take a look at the bigger picture. It’s easy to say that China needs to do more, but what are some solutions you would propose to alleviate such a serious attack on the environment while keeping the economy in mind? Asia Chronicle News also offers in-depth analyses and commentaries on issues facing Asia, and China’s environmental challenge is one of them. Their articles are worth a read I think. http://www.asiachroniclenews.com
wind4me says:
October 17th, 2009 at 4:48 am
I study the Wind Power segment in China and the world has zero clue about how committed China is to wind power and its simple to me that China gets it about THEY MUST GO WIND or they DIE”, its that simple!
The Chinese are also committed to producing wind power and taking over the global market in Wind Power for exports down the road. Wind Power means jobs and means green power and less Coal. Watch China and USA sign a Global Climate Treaty Nov 15th as OBAMA plans/strategizes a global plan to allow China to take center stage a MONTH before Copenhagan and once China and USA commit, the world will sign!
Rich says:
October 30th, 2009 at 9:08 am
hotaruSTAR
You bring up a question that is being asked more and more.
Can we afford the solutions? If factories are asked to improve their environmental standards, will they be able to survive, and what is the knockon effect if they cannot.
My response is, more frequently, becoming one where the question is turned around.
How can we afford to go forward the way we are?
That, and we can take the recent lead poisoning case as an example, the economy is we currently operate it is not a sustainable one, and the costs of health care and clean up far out weight the investment costs of improving the system.
To date, I have yet to see anyone (outside of the recent Greenpeace paper on the costs of coal) develop a true cost model for what the real operating costs of the current model is. That, stripped of any negative externalities, we of course view the brown was as “cheaper”, but if you were to take into account the negative externalities perhaps the story would be a very different one.
I suspect there are some very smart people now looking at this, and I suspect that someone will win a nobel prize in economics once the model is complete.
R
Rich says:
October 30th, 2009 at 9:10 am
wind4me.
I too see that wind has power, but it is going to take a lot more than that to right the ship.
China, like many other countries, is horribly inefficient and will find much larger gains there. Once the system is lead, the percentages that wind can hit will be far higher, and the system as a whole will be much better for it.
R