Tim Ferguson
Forbes
Sep 2, 2014
Since 2007, the China Green project at the Asia Society, based in New York City but with a sizable presence in Hong Kong, has been tracking the mainland’s worsening environmental plight. As managing editor/producer of the project, Michael Zhao leads the effort to keep tabs and encourage reforms.
One of its useful devices is the China Air Daily site, which allows Web users to track the sometimes awful state of smog in three Chinese metropolises, as well as two in the U.S.
Although the central government has pushed new “clean” technologies and responded to specific pollution outrages, the environment remains a sensitive political topic in China, as elsewhere. Sometimes those who push too hard for change go to jail. Sensitivities are compounded when ecological damage is being done in regions such as the Tibetan plateau or western China where ethnic separatism (or, Han Chinese oppression) are part of the mix. But citizen movements are having their effect. Last month the Asia Society began a film series with Waking the Green Tiger, a documentary about efforts to forestall the flooding of villages in pursuit of a dam at Yunnan province’s Tiger Leaping Gorge. I met Chinese producer Shi Lihong, who was in New York for the event.
Tiger Leaping Gorge in western Yunnan province. (Photo: Wikipedia)
Hydropower has its appeal as “sustainable” energy, but as that film shows, there is a cost. Indeed, the presence or absence of water, and not just its quality, is another aching issue for China, with desertification a plight for much of the country. In terms of air pollution, coal–the dominant fuel for China’s electricity–does even more pervasive damage than dams. The choices are not neat and easy. Shale gas, a relatively benign fuel source, in particularly hard to develop in China.
