In China, its not easy being “green”
September 28th, 2009 by Kent KedlInteresting article by Tom Friedman in the NYT the other day on the “race” to get green between China and the West. I love Friedman’s stuff – he hails from my neck of the woods, St. Louis Park, MN so I gotta support the homies – but I think might be getting a bit too excited too soon.
The story can be summed up in Friedman’s first paragraph: “I believe 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.” While the juxtaposed color metaphors are cool, I think he might be reading too many of the government’s brochures!
Yes, China is starting in invest massive amounts of money into exploring green-tech initiatives, much of it coming from their economic stimulus plan. However, China will have two ends of the spectrum … one VERY high-tech and “green” development and the other VERY old-school with polluting factories that will continue to dump junk into the environment for many decades to come. China still generates 70-some percent of their energy through burning coal … I heard a statistic (but cannot support it) that China brings on one new “clean” power plant a month (water, wind, nuclear) and yet a new coal-burning power plant still opens here EVERY WEEK. This is the irony of China … kind of like the brand new airport built so far out of town that it is only reachable by dirt roads.
The air and water quality in China’s cities are still some of the worst in the world. I was out in a Western city a few months ago and refused to eat any of the local seafood … I had seen the state of the fish ponds sitting right next to the chemical factories! And just yesterday, there was a yellow haze in Shanghai that reminded me of a scene from Blade Runner. New, high tech, green initiatives will certainly help China going forward, but there is a TON of damage already done to the environment here that is going to be difficult to help with the new magic.
Hopefully, the aggressive, growing edge of China’s green-tech developments will spur the U.S. and other Western countries into truly innovating, as did Sputnik. China might be able to grow their leading edge, but it is going to leave the trailing edge even farther behind.
