Dear Ben, Tim, Winged Heart and Charles,
You've been talking about materialism. Tim played Devil's Advocate to Ben's hopes that China would be able to avoid the excesses of materialism. Tim didn't want anyone to think that China and other countries shouldn't have the chance to catch up on real material progress. (This is my memory of the basics of that discussion.)
I wrote here recently about Bill Gates' remarks in Davos. Remember how Bill Gates said that China has remarkably intelligent and able leaders? Not his exact words -- again, just from my memory, but not far off the mark. Here's an example
of the kind of thing he must mean. An amazing move made by the government of China recently has been called "one of the most dramatic ever taken by any government." What a statement! It came from the environmental editor of The Independent -- a major UK paper on 2-13-5.
What did China do that is so historic, unique and remarkable? She slowed and halted work on the building of 22 major dams and power stations. One of the projects is an important power facility at the highly controversial Three Gorges dam
on the Yangtse. This is a dramatic greening of her policies. It is the first instance of its kind in the world. The Chinese State Environment Protection agency laid down, that the projects which cover 13 of the country's provinces and are worth a total of 7.5 billion pounds sterling shall not proceed, until their impact on the environment has been reviewed.
The Independent's article says that there is rapidly growing environmental concern in China. The move is reported to be due to growing interest in the environment by premier Wen Jiabao and other national leaders. Evidently many of the children of top Chinese politicians and officials are members of environmental pressure groups which are thriving at the country's top universities.
China is reported to have done far more than the USA has done to combat the danger of climate change, even before this last dramatic move. To back this up, The
Independent said China's clean-up measures have caused emissions of carbon dioxide, (the main cause of global warming,) which had risen rapidly between 1978 and 1996 to fall sharply between 1996 and 2000 due to clean-up measures, while her
economy still grew by 36 per cent. In the same period, US emissions grew by 5
per cent, yet President Bush cited growing pollution in China as his justification for refusing to join the Kyoto Protocol.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair went out of his way to welcome China's readiness to take "a real lead" in combating global warming.
Methinks I see a game of chess, and the Chinese are very good players.
Mary
