Annie Leonard at the Tides Foundation created this video called the “Story of Stuff.” It was a very well-made video, packed with a lot of information about product life-cycle, consumer product politics, and environmental justice. This shows me the persuasive power of multimedia presentation based on good facts. Check it out here:
After you watch it, do you think twice about buying?
On May 12, 2008, Sichuan province in China suffers the 7.9 earthquake, resulting in over 16,000 deaths and over 60,000 injuries (as of May 14). The relief effort is underway. The Chinese government is doing a great job in pulling together their resources to support the rescue/relief effort.
I am particularly impressed by the way the Chinese government is handling the public media and international support. The government is completely open about what is going. The official CCTVs are covering the disaster and rescue effort around the clock. Several unofficial camera phone footages are uploaded to Youtube and other video websites. This one is probably the most popular one.
The Chinese government welcomes international support. This is a stark contrast with the way the government handled SARS in 2003. I was in Beijing at that time, and I was not able to find out what was happening until the government released the information at the peak of the SARS epidemic in the early April (I believe it was around April 9th).
If you would like to support the relief effort, the best method according to NPR is to go through Red Cross, which already has relief works on the ground in China to help distribute relief aids. Currently, money is more needed than blood. Here is the donation page (click on the big red DONATE NOW):
http://www.redcross.org/news/in/profiles/Intl_profile_ChinaEarthquake.html
BBC did a story on China’s successful biodiversity conservation effort. This story is refreshing to me because it does not focus only on the environmental problems that China is facing. Those problems are real, of course. However, it is important to point out what is working right as well.
China is a country that in some peoples’ minds has become synonymous with industrial pollution, rigid political control and spectacular economic expansion.
But behind this image lies another world which is the real, essential China – a place of vast shifting deserts, tropical coral reefs, steaming jungles, snow-capped peaks, evergreen forests and smoking volcanoes.
And surviving, tucked away within this incredibly diverse landscape, is a wealth of animal and plant life.
China is home to 534 species of mammals – one eighth of the world’s total, of which more than a hundred, including iconic creatures such as the giant panda, are endemic.
For the full story and a short video clip: Wild times in changing China
The following article has a good summary of what China will be facing socio-economically in the next few decades. It starts out with these questions:
China’s growth over the past few years has been nothing short of miraculous, and it is predicted that the economy will overtake America’s within a generation. But how did it all happen? And what are the implications for the rest of the world?
The article also has some interesting numbers as well.
Check out the full story here: The dragon awakens: China, how did it happen?
The United States Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, is organizing a Clean Energy and Environment Trade Mission to China and India, September 1-12, 2008. The trade mission will target a broad range of clean energy and environmental technologies such as renewable energy, biofuels, energy efficiency, clean coal, distributed generation, waste handling and treatment, wastewater treatment, packaging recycling, and drinking water treatment. The mission will make stops in Beijing, Jinan, and Shanghai, China as well as New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, India. It will be led by Assistant Secretary of Commerce David Bohigian.
Through this mission, ITA seeks to match participating U.S. companies with prescreened partners, agents, distributors, representatives, licensees, or retailers in each of these important sectors. In addition to one-on-one business meetings, the agenda will also include meetings with national and local government officials, networking opportunities, country briefings, seminars, and site visits.
In the China Environment Conference in December 2007 at Berkeley, one of the guest professors mentioned that China will need help from the West in the area of capacity building. By matching "participating U.S. companies will be matched with prescreened partners and etc.
However, it is unclear to me what the pre-screening process is and how it is conducted. Is not clean energy and environment an issue for the entire country of China, not just particular sectors?
The full article can be found here: Clean Energy and Environment Trade Mission to China and India
This is a late post, but the elevation of status for the State Environmental Protection Agency to Ministry of Environmental Protection is a very important event to mark.
In 2008, the Eleventh National People’s Congress (NPC) Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) elevates the status of State Environmental Protection Agency to a “Super-ministry” (or cabinet ministry)—Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP).
Link to the article: Question Is Not Big or Small, but Efficiency
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