Helping China See Through Its Environment

In today's New York Times, Tom Friedman recounts the unscientific but reliable way that one Beijing resident tests his city's air quality every morning: "He looks out his 24th-story window and checks how far he can see. On a rare pristine day, when the wind has swept Beijing, he can see the Fragrant Mountain rising to the northwest. On a 'good' pollution day, he can see the China World building four blocks away. On a bad day, he can’t see the building next door." Visibility, of course, isn't the only casualty of Beijing's air quality issues: "China’s Environmental Protection Administration...recently estimated the annual number of premature deaths in China caused by air pollution at 358,000."

Friedman makes a strong case for action: "I would argue that the same kind of bruising effort it took for Deng Xiaoping to move China from communism to capitalism will be required to move China from its polluting model of capitalism to a sustainable one. Mao almost destroyed China with his Cultural Revolution to make it more red, more communist. Without a new cultural revolution to make China more green, more sustainable, the Chinese growth juggernaut will destroy itself." He also lays out three components of successful change: stop building coal-fired power plants and instead build "California-style virtual efficiency 'power plants'" that identify opportunities for energy conservation rather than produce more pollution, hold politicians accountable for their (as of yet unfulfilled) green promises, and finally, "allow more press freedom and public participation, because the best environmental watchdogs are local newspapers and farmers."

  

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