Articles by praktike

U.S. and China collaborate to prepare Beijing for Olympics

Mike Millikin reports:

The Department of Energy (DOE) is leading a U.S. multi-agency team to help Beijing achieve World Health Organization (WHO) standards for urban air quality by 2008--in time for the Summer Olympics.

The Chinese government intends to invest $17-$23 billion to meet the goal, and is planning on  major reductions in coal use, tougher fuel-quality and emissions standards and further development of a protective greenbelt that separates north China from silt-laden desert winds.

I was briefly in Beijing in the summer of 2001 as a tourist, and the air pollution there was absolutely staggering. It's hard to imagine that a crash program would get the city up to WHO standards by 2008, but I suppose stranger things have happened. In any case, it's good to see collaboration between the U.S. and China on this issue.

Coalition-building

Larry Schweiger, the relatively new President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, has a piece in the Winter '05 issue of Creation Care, the environmental magazine of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Here's an excerpt:

Despite accusations otherwise, U.S. enviros are working to help their Chinese counterparts

I'm going to take my own advice, though I was mostly thinking about oil and global warming. Let's engage.

Cicero, on the neoconservative blog Winds of Change, writes about the recent riots against pollution in rural China:

I would like to see people calling themselves environmentalists take a stand on this. Stopping seal clubbing is not going to change the world. Signing on to feel-good accords like Kyoto accelerates environmental destruction in places like China. Taking a stand with the villagers of Huaxi -- if only a symbolic gesture -- would be a step in the right direction. In the end, we should all do business for child and survival.

I don't think there's any evidence that Kyoto would have any effect one way or the other on "environmental destruction in places like China," so I don't know what he's talking about there. It's a red herring. But China is an environmental catastrophe, and I agree that China's environmental problems are more important than seal-clubbing.

Here's a quick overview of China's disaster from Joshua Kurlantzick:

The new coalition of national security types and greens promising.

Hello, Gristmill readers. I'm very excited that Dave has asked me to do some guest blogging here, as Grist is my favorite environmental magazine and I'm thrilled that Gristmill is asking good questions and reaching out to other bloggers and publications. As I told Dave via email, I used to blog about environmental topics on the now-defunct American Footprint, before I got distracted by terrorism and American policy in the Greater Middle East.

Always in the back of my mind, however, has been the conviction that environmental and in particular energy issues aren't getting enough attention, and that they are deeply intertwined with our national security. Our current national complacency is, in the long run (or even in the short run!), going to make us less prosperous and less safe. I'm by no means a policy expert, an economist, a scientist, or a defense strategist. I'm just a regular old blogger. But I do read a lot and what I read makes me very, very concerned that we aren't doing enough as a society to make the right choices. Because we do have choices, and we are at a clear fork in the road.

There have been a number of developments recently that, in my humble opinion, offer great hope. The first is that the American public, by and large, is well aware of its growing dependence on imported oil. This is more true when pump prices are high, as they are now (and may well be indefinitely). The second is that several powerful new groups--defense hawks, unions, big business, and evangelical Christians--are starting to make noises that they, too, want to push for change, and push hard.

And that's a good thing.

Traditional environmental activists (assuming there is such an identifiable group) should warmly welcome their support, because we're going to need it. They've got big megaphones and beelines to important centers of power. I don't expect all of the factions of this emerging coalition to get along all of the time. Some compromises may need to be made in order to keep everyone on board. But the conversation and the jostling and the disagreement about strategy and tactics are ultimately a source of strength, because the more debate the broader public hears, the better. And those folks know how to win converts to their causes, and no doubt have many lessons to impart. Let's play this game to win.