Thomas Friedman: China, Energy and Environment

My favorite middle-east-climate-change-globalization columnist, Thomas Friedman, has been on a China kick in the last few weeks, and he's drawn some really interesting conclusions about the role China and all the other fast-growth developing countries are going to have in addressing climate change. They will soon be contributing to this problem more than the United States. It's scary stuff, made scarier by the fact that the United States Government is not doing *anything* to address climate change.

Check them out:

Doha and Dalian

In the last few weeks, I happened to visit Doha and Dalian, and I must say: I was stunned.

Before explaining why, let me acknowledge that chances are you’ve not visited Doha or Dalian recently. Indeed, it may be — I presume nothing — that you have never heard of either city. Doha is the capital of Qatar, a tiny state east of Saudi Arabia. Dalian is in northeast China and is one of China’s Silicon Valleys because of its proliferation of software parks and its dynamic, techie mayor, Xia Deren. What was stunning is that I hadn’t been to either city for more than three years, and I barely recognized either one.

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China in Three Colors


can China really undertake the energy/environmental revolution it needs without the empowerment of its people to a whole new degree — à la the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004? The more I see China wrestling with its environment, the more I’m convinced that it is going to prove much, much easier for China to have gone from communism to capitalism than to go from dirty capitalism to clean capitalism.


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Lead, Follow or Move Aside

China today is entering a really delicate phase on the climate-energy issue — the phase I like to call “The Wal-Mart environmental moment.” I wish the same could be said of America and President Bush.

The “Wal-Mart environmental moment” starts with the C.E.O. adopting a green branding strategy as a purely defensive, public relations, marketing move. Then an accident happens — someone in the shipping department takes it seriously and comes up with a new way to package the latest product and saves $100,000. This gets the attention of the C.E.O., who turns to his P.R. adviser and says, “Well, isn’t that interesting? Get me a sustainability expert. Let’s do this some more.”