I will try to have the trailer posted here before the end of the day, as in before midnight on the east coast of the U.S.

Until then, I’m preemptively responding to some concern about the thrust of this movie. I understand concern that my adviser raised about sounding too “boosterish”. Writes Dan, “I hope that you are very positive about China’s env’l situation–where appropriate–and honest about problems, where appropriate.  You don’t want to lose credibility by sounding too boosterish (I’m sure you know that, but I just want to make sure you do!).”

I’m not sure how to solve this problem, because the people we spoke with were doing positive work. I responded to Dan’s concern: “It is true that I set out to talk to the people who are doing really great conservation and EE work, so there’s is the story we’re telling. I pitched the project in this way, telling the good story about the environmental movement in China. I thought that, balanced with the negative coverage in the Western main stream media and the greenwashed media coverage in China, this makes a complete picture. BUT, you’re right that it de-legitimizes the film to be only singing China’s praises. We have a couple of folks who are working for sectors other than the IENGO sector who bring a little more realism to the picture, and we’ll introduce them later on. I think Ben thought that, overwhelmingly, this is a positive and hopeful story, so he didn’t bring the counter arguments into the trailer. In such a short representation, that would be misleading I think.”

Jim Fallows mentions “the influential China Beat” in his Atlantic Monthly post on 30 December. I had never come across the China Beat. It “examines media coverage of China, providing context and criticism from China scholars and writers.” I will look more closely soon, but it will be interesting to see what The China Beat has to say about the Western media coverage of the Olympics in China.

In August, on the China Beat, Haiyan Lee writes: “So is not the motto for the Beijing Olympics, “One world, one dream,” a tad naive? It’s a beautiful ideal, but it ill prepares one for the inconvenient fact of human plurality and the inevitable clashes of desires and interests. Might not “Many dreams, a single planet” better serve China as well as the rest of the world?” This message also implicitly holds ideas about environmental sustainability and conservation, because if we have many dreams but only one planet, we each have to fit the dreams together seamlessly without too many conflicts.

The Media Watch column on the China Beat is of particular interest.

In the Beijing Delgation section of Policy Innovations, a publication of the Carnegie Council, it is suggested that democracy is about satisfaction. The satisfaction level of the citizenry is an interesting way to gauge democracy–actually, if democracy is a representative system of government, and citizens in theory vote in a way to encourage and increase happiness for themselves and their families, this doesn’t seem entirely implausible as a system for gauging democracy.

The first chapter of Forging Environmentalism is called “The Politics and Ethics of Going Green in China”. The forward is by Judith Shapiro and outlines the development of environmentalism in China, beginning BEFORE Mao’s death, with the country’s participation in the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.

Most of this Fight Against Climate Change on the Xinhua site is old, but there’s a mention specifically of the Olympics as part of the Chinese efforts to mitigate global warming. The “Backgrounder” information is interesting as an effort to make up for historically weak environmental education in China.

I just revisited the article on the Yale Environment 360 forum, Under Sooty Exterior, A Green China Emerges, that I left a response to last week. It seems like we have tapped into a voice that was not represented previously, and so it seemed like I was alone in my championing of China’s environmental movement, but once this voice gets tapped, there’s something there. If it started for me with Tisha and Rambo and, later, Jack in Tiger Leaping Gorge in 2005, remembering these feelings and holding strong to them is what is making this happen.

That is what is making this happen for me, but perpetuating and strengthening it is tapping into a network of people who are also not jaded by Western preconceptions about What Is China–people like Fred Pearce, who wrote the above article, and Jim Fallows at the Atlantic Monthly, mentioned previously. Adding to these represented voices are people like Zn Huang, who posted on the Yale forum. Zn writes, “We are very grateful for all those who are creating awareness through positive documentaries and education. It is the first step to change for a greener and more sustainable future. I am looking forward to the documentary and hope it gets released either through national tv or through other mass distribution channels. I hope it becomes part of the curiculum in Chinese education.”

This is exciting!

I don’t want to hear this crying about Chinese polluters from people in the United States. There are important issues to consider: “It is estimated that the average American still pollutes between five and six times more that the average Chinese person.” (BBC) There are tons of people in China who don’t pollute, and, living in the United States, it’s impossible not to pollute. I was having coffee today with Celia Hoffman, and we talked about keeping a daily journal of waste produced. This is an interesting idea, and I think this is a really important! It’s only a matter of being aware of how you’re affecting, and believing the Chinese kid in the environmental education program when he tells you one plastic bag matters when every person is thinking about their one plastic bag. This is the scale issue that Bill Moomaw tells us about in our film. It comes down to an issue of education, and China is doing work to solve this problem.

According to the BBC article “China building more power plants”, the policy of moving manufacturing out of the developed world into China and India has been a “climate disaster”. This article was published in the middle of June, take note. I think China’s environment has become a more contested issue since the Olympics in August. I think it’s important to note that, as Greenpeace director John Sauven, also quoted in this BBC article, said, “Responsibility for China’s soaring emissions lies note just in Beijing but also in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo.” It’s something important to think about, but it doesn’t get the same kind of attention, because, I guess, it’s not easy blame.

Today I finished reviewing the footage that we have shot so far. It takes me four times the shooting time to transcribe these interviews. And I’m not even very good at it, Jeff tells me. I’m finished transcribing, so, I’m all done learning about China’s environment!

During the last tape that I was reviewing, something came together in a great way, and made me excited to start building a story from the pieces we have. I am continually starting to lose, and then regaining, my momentum on this project. Something always happens to make me remember that–oh yes, that’s right, I love this work. It’s difficult to remember that though, as Abe and I were just discussing, when the feedback loop is not complete. The Internet is heralded as an emergent system like your brain and the software system in your computer; they rely so much on feedback, but that feedback mechanism is only productive in propagating ideas if it gets used. Steven Johnson writes about this relationship in his book, Emergence, and this is where it was first highlighted for me.

The thing to prompt me to write another post is something that I was thinking about on the train today–the T is MUCH bumpier than the train in Beijing. You could paint your toenails on the train in Beijing. I was fumbling with my dollar bills to put them into the machine on the train–I kept hold of my Charlie Card from Boston to Chicago to Beijing to Chicago to Boston, then lost it in the four blocks from the T to my house–and the conductor just waved me along, so as to save time. This made me think about sustainability (Most things make me think about sustainability.). Is this conductor’s tendency to wave people along reflected at all in his gross product for the day? We learned in Beijing that every little bit counts–imagine Chinese students in environmental education programs telling you that they believe that every little bit counts. This is very cute. I hope we can reflect in our film, but then the conductor today made me think about when time is weighed against those few T passengers’ fares? Do the bits count to the same degree if they’re weighed against the value of little bits of time? I’m sure what this conductor loses in my T fare, he more than makes up for in being on time for the next stop. There is a temporal aspect of this idea that I like so much.

I’m applying for another grant from the Tides Foundation to continue to do this work. I am continuing to get really positive feedback, which lets me know that there is more here if I just keep looking closely enough. I think problems are solvable, depending on the vantage point from which you look at them. I had the thought recently that I should have the film translated into Chinese. I asked my adviser in China if he thought there is a Chinese audience for this film, and I will budget for a translator if Libo tells me there is potential there. I think this is a cool thing.

I have connected with the NBC affiliate in Maine about possibly working with NBC to air some of our work. These talks are in the very beginning phases of development, but it is a forum which has expressed interest, and has possibilities.

I scheduled a meeting with Bill Moomaw of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–Bill Moomaw also teaches at Tufts–but Jeff is unavailable to film the meeting, so I will call Bill’s secretary on Monday to reschedule for when we have hired a video editor to work with me.

The rapid growth of the Chinese economy at the end of the 20th century has pushed China’s environment into the international spotlight—unsustainable use of the country’s resources and the waste that is generated through the use of those resources is affecting the world environment adversely. The rest of the world is becoming increasingly aware of the interconnected nature of ecological systems because of global climate change and its manifestations. The interconnectedness of the global ecological system is reinforced by interconnections that have been realized through technological advances—“The World is Flat” phenomenon—and also through the increased fluidity of the movement of goods, people, and ideas.

Continue reading Environmentalism in China [pdf]

The Hengduan Mountains are located in southwest China, where the Tibetan plateau meets the eastern Himalayan Mountain range. Bordered by Myanmar to the west and Yunnan Province, China to the south, the Hengduan Mountains are rich in species and ecosystem biodiversity. Three major rivers cut through these mountains, running within 85 kilometers (50 miles) of each other at some parts. UNESCO World Heritage Foundation has named this area the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area for its stunning beauty and its biological and cultural importance. Conservation International, an international non-governmental organization, calls the Hengduan Mountains a biodiversity hotspot, one of 34 such places in the world.

Continue reading Conservation Biology In the Hengduan Mountains Sub-alpine Conifer Forests [pdf]

Air quality in Beijing has improved for eight straight years. In order for the International Olympic Committee to award Beijing the Summer Olympics in 2008, Beijing had to show air pollution levels consistent with levels of Olympic cities in the past. I just read “China’s Silver Lining” by James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly, and it was more positive about China’s environment than many other sources I have looked at.

His comments on air quality reminded me of something a source said to me when I was in China in 2005. I was in Tiger Leaping Gorge doing research about the environmental and societal effects of a dam that the government was planning to build on the Jisha Upper Yangtze River. I visited the gorge three times during my semester in Kunming. Sean Xia, a guesthouse owner in the gorge, said to me once, “Pollution everywhere. Have to take airplane to see blue sky. So that’s why this gorge you have to protect.”

Sean’s comment is also related to the tricky balance between the micro aspects and the more macro aspects of development. China’s air quality is a HUGE, macro issue, but Sean’s explicit connections between his own local environment and Chinese air quality is interesting and important. The way that Sean’s livelihood is directly connected to the environment through ecotourism reinforces Sean’s connection to his place, which further strengthens Sean’s connection to the environment.

I am hoping to further explore the way that a connection to place inspires conservation in the film that Jeff and I shoot in August. Also I would like to look more directly the micro and macro aspects of development, and try to make connections between the two.

29 May 2008

Tessa, Jeff,

Good news! You will get your grant. It’s not official yet, and you won’t receive a letter of approval for another few weeks, but you’re at or near the top of everyone’s list, and the rest is just standard protocol.

It’s a rare exception that we tell anyone in advance of such approval, though we have done it a couple of times before in special circumstances. In your case, we recognize your need to start making plans and committing yourselves to a course of action, so you are now free to go ahead.

Congratulations and best wishes,

John