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

Today, Thomas Friedman at the New York Times published an article that reads, “Yes, China’s leaders have decided to go green.”

Jeff sent me this Op/Ed article about the development of clean technology in China. The New Sputnik claims, in true Tom Friedman style, that “Future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become Green China.”

I like superlatives too.

I’m thinking about the direction in which to take this project, and the development of clean tech in China is a possibility that I’ve mentioned previously here. A friend sent me this article in the LA Times recently, China, green? In the case of solar water heating, yes, which begins, “In a nation known more for its belching smokestacks, solar water heaters are on nearly every roof in some cities.”

Maybe we should rethink how we know this nation, in order to incorporate this recent shift in energy focus? This article comes at a great time though, and helps to highlight this movement that we already knew was starting in China. all good news.

My friend in documentary television distribution sent me an interesting NYT article this morning. At first, I was uninterested because often these articles have a bias and I’m tired of hearing it. However, Andrew sent me this article for a certain reason, and I think this reason is super important to highlight. Lead Sickens 1,300 Children in China is about a manganese smelter in Hunan Province sickening kids in a nearby school. But, of really important note here is that this article was first reported  by state-run China Daily and then later picked up by the NYT. This means that the media is playing an important role in encouraging environmental awareness–you’ll learn more about this from a Beijing Daxue professor in the Green Reason. Not only are Chinese people highlighting that this is of note, the media is reinforcing people’s alarm by broadcasting it.

It’s important to mention that the smelter is unliscensed because it’s newly opened, so there may be kinks that get ironed out when the government liscenses the smelter and the Chinese people have more opportunity to voice their grievances. I’m always willing to give China the benefit of the doubt.

We don’t have to take ourselves so seriously, I think. Internet Adds 12th Website is an article in the Science and Technology section of the Onion today about how China has added a 12th web site to the Internet “for the enrichment of the nation and the advancement of lasting social stability”. This is funny! And there is so much to be gained from acknowledging the humor here, and then moving forward.

I think in order for China to move into a more liberal system, where public goods like the environment are considered more fully, there needs to be an understanding and an acknowledgement of the system from which China is emerging.

Looking today at the China Greentech Initiative, an information-sharing web site for the collection and analysis of information about the greentech movement in China, where my contact Ellen Carberry is affiliated, and CGI’s aim of helping to “facilitate the collection, analysis and sharing of research on the evolving greentech market in China” reminds me of Ma Jun’s China Water Pollution Map.

China Greentech Initiative’s development of an open-source China Greentech Report makes me think of Ma Jun’s water pollution information sharing web site. The crux of the enviromental movement in China is access to information. We’re reminded by the BeiDa professors in the film though, that even when the information is provided, the public needs some background information connecting pollution and health effects. Enter Roots & Shoots! To me, this is all coming together really nicely and I’m getting excited about potential directions that we can continue to take this project forward. Ellen and I talk on the phone later this week about how we can potentially work together and I’m looking forward to thinking about what we can do to help bolster and strenghten this movement.

In the Green Reason, we talk with Ellen Carberry, Venture Partner at HAO capital, who is quoted in the China Daily today, in this article about the uncertianties surrounding green investment in China, Green Investment Will Keep Growing.

I think this is a promising direction in which to go forward, and I plan to send Ellen a follow-up note to see if she has ideas about going forward. The development of green tech in China is a direction that we have talked about going with the Green Reason. It isn’t as catchy as telling the Roots & Shoots story in China, but there may be more to gain from highlighting this movement.

First, it is ironic and kind of sneaky that this controversial web filtering software has been labeled The Green Dam. I’m sure that point has been made before, but I didn’t find any record of it, so I’m claming it!