Have you ever heard of something more exciting? My friend Andrew sent a great NYT article this morning,
Chinese and U.S. Partners to Build Big West-Texas Wind Farm, about a joint venture between China’s Shenyang Power Group and the U.S. Renewable Energy Group to develop wind power in Texas, but the exciting thing about this 1.5 billion dollar project is that the manufacturing and funding is coming from China.
Further, says the NYT, “The project would mark the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States market, according to the vice mayor of the city of Shenyang, Yang Yazhou, who spoke at a news conference announcing the joint venture.”
Construction begins on this project next March 2010.
something is happening now though!
What a hopeful, positive headline from the NYTimes today. I learned today, in Water Needs in China Create Opportunity, that water shortages in Northern China are driving innovation and that Beijing plans to reuse 100 percent of its wastewater by 2013!
I’m not really comfortable writing about The Truth, because it makes me feel self-conscious about being A Filmmaker, but my friend Andrew presented an interesting idea to me that I hadn’t considered previously (!).
China, Hush: Stories of China is a web site that Aviva sent to me and it is a bit off-putting to me because it’s so direct. Maybe the Green Reason is similarly direct, but in a very different direction. The photographer has an agenda and it’s very clear. Thank you for helping me to understand this, Andrew. Andrew pointed out to me that what is interesting about these photographs is the part that is not the subject of these photographs, but the background. The illustrative example which he gave me is to notice, for instance, the labels on the trash in the river, to tell a certain story about what is real and true about this environment. The photographer didn’t choose the labels on the trash containers, so his agenda is not a factor in this element, so it is more true. The picture of sewage on the Yellow River, for example, is blatant but also taken completely out of context. We don’t know anything about the environment in which this picture takes place. To see this photograph without knowing anything about the framework makes it less true–or, rather, we just know a lot less about it–because it is then left up to the viewer to fabricate the context, and the viewer has a bias: why is he looking at a web site titled “Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China” as opposed to one titled “Amazing Pictures, EE in China” or, “Amazing Pictures, Pollution on the Hudson River”?
My friend Larry–also our Olympic historian in the GR–sent me this article, Beijing’s Air is Cleaner, but Far from Clean from the NYT yesterday and we also talk in the Green Reason with Zhu Tong (mentioned on page one of this NYT article!), an atmospheric scientist at Beijing Daxue. I’m so happy to be confirmed by NPR, yesterday, and the NYT now in this very understated way. But I recognized it first!
Climate Agency Sees China’s Efforts Paying Dividends is about the environmental movement in China. It’s from a new writer who I haven’t heard anything from yet, Jad Mouawad, but I look forward to seeing more from him along these lines.
Some excepts:
“One of the report’s main findings was that China’s recent energy policies could achieve much bigger cuts than expected.
…If China manages to achieve the predicted savings, that nation will be “at the forefront of all global efforts to combat climate change,” Fatih Birol, the energy agency’s chief economist, said in an interview.”
food for more thought.
This morning the BBC carried an article, What Happened to Global Warming? that furthers the questions about whether the global climate change is human influenced or whether it is natural variation in the global environment. I think it doesn’t matter, because, globally, we are losing species, and the point has been made before here that this will effect humans in the long term.
The term “global warming” was coined before we understood the full effects of the problem. Now we have a better understanding, and it is still getting better. It will continue to improve, if we can dedicate more resources to better understanding the problem, just like anything else.
I hear this has been all over the Internet after the Daily Times reported it in November 2006. Now the BBC is carrying it. patience patience for these things to happen.
I read about this project when my friend Lee sent me the link to the BBC article.
This BBC article about William Kamkwamba is pretty inspiring. Says Kamkwamubs, “I feel there’s lots of work to be done.” Kamkwamba builds a windmill from found objects (It’s art, too.) and has attracted the attention of Al Gore with his idealistic–and realistic–project. And the author of the book that was written about this Kamkwamba’s project, The Boy Who Harnassed the Wind, calls this generation, “the cheetah generation”. We’re all driven by the imperative need for this kind of “green” innovation. This whole sustainably craze, in China and in Malawi, is demand-driven and contingent on the passion of people like Kamkwamba.
love, tessa
