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Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
Spend, spend, spend is not the way out
By David B. Sutton |
January 22, 2010, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
I want to commend Professor Zhu Dajian for his insightful comments in his opinion piece (Shanghai Daily, December 28, 2009). I agree that China's future, indeed, that of the entire world, depends on a Green Leap Forward.
It is a great irony that many of the very places with the freedom and creativity to come up with the newest innovations for more sustainable living and the ability to implement them seem to lack the political will to do so. This clearly is the case in the United States.
The goals of the dominant corporate interests that control the direction and policy of the government are not aligned with the broader needs of the society. It is the government's role to protect the commons and ensure the public good.
For several years now I have been following with excitement the talk about eco-cities in China. But the excitement was sometimes short-lived. For, as is the case in so many other examples of my elevated hopes, they were dashed by inadequate implementation. The next critical step in China's new-found prominence in the field of sustainable development needs to be concrete demonstration of doing what needs to be done.
Taking the right advice is critical. It makes little sense to listen to those who haven't succeeded themselves in achieving any degree of sustainable development. Listening to the very same bankers that have brought the world economy to its knees makes no sense at all.
The principles of sustainable development are easy enough to understand. They simply require that we look to nature for guiding principles.
All systems on earth are ultimately powered by the energy of the sun. With respect to matter, the earth is a closed system. There is a finite amount of physical resources at our disposal.
Based on the false assumptions of unlimited natural resources to draw from, unlimited ecosystem services to support us and unlimited places to put our wastes, human society has evolved linear economic systems that take natural resources, make products and then dispose of them as waste when they are no longer useful to us.
Sooner or later, in a finite world, this one-way industrial process must end. The solution to all problems is not simply more consumption. It concerns me to hear China being given the advice that it needs to consume its way out of the economic mess that the West has created. "People in China save too much," say the pundits. "They need to buy more to stimulate the economy."
I agree with Professor Zhu's plea to "jettison the possession-oriented mindset." To follow the way of the mass consumer society of the US in China would be a disaster of epic proportions.
To create a sustainable society it will certainly require less consumption of offending goods and services (those that violate the natural guiding principles stated above), and their substitution by more benign and cost-effective alternatives.
For example, China has now become the largest maker and market of automobiles in the world. A major feat and an awesome responsibility, because China cannot go the way of the other industrialized societies before it.
It is clear that the internal combustion engine and the tons of molded steel it propels have been a major cause of many of our most prominent urban and environmental problems. These gas guzzlers are not only major polluters (polluted air, acid rain, noise pollution, global warming; not to mention the foreign policy consequences of dependence on imported oil), they also require that the country's communities, both urban and rural, be designed to accommodate them.
Cars are cars
China's focus and manufacturing expertise in electric cars is encouraging, but cars are cars. Whether powered by green technologies or not, they will make their contribution to the damage to urban neighborhoods and communities, highway congestion and deaths, the loss of biological diversity, the damage to fragile landscapes, and urban sprawl.
China is poised to lead the world on a different path of development - one in which the linear industrial processes of the past are converted into a circular economy emulating the processes of natural systems driven by the power of the sun and cycling their substance in pursuit of meeting the needs of all its members.
To do this, it makes little sense to follow the failed examples and flawed advice of those who have gone before.
In the opening to a market economy, China must retain its socialist perspectives of internalizing the external social and environmental costs of a single-minded market and provide for all of its citizens. This is not something you will hear from the architects of our current economic crisis.
The World Expo 2010 offers a grand opportunity to usher in a Green Leap Forward. Demonstrations and expertise from all around the world will be on display - these could and should serve as a catalyst for combining China's expressed will with ways for its implementation.
But it will take more than a few isolated demonstrations and image-building promotional campaigns. There needs to be wide-spread application of these best practices across the board in all new building and construction projects. I am looking forward to seeing that happen.
(The author is a former professor from the University of California and Stanford University, teaching environmental conservation, technology transfer and sustainable development. He is now living and working in Shanghai. The views are his own. His email: suttonleming@gmail.com)
It is a great irony that many of the very places with the freedom and creativity to come up with the newest innovations for more sustainable living and the ability to implement them seem to lack the political will to do so. This clearly is the case in the United States.
The goals of the dominant corporate interests that control the direction and policy of the government are not aligned with the broader needs of the society. It is the government's role to protect the commons and ensure the public good.
For several years now I have been following with excitement the talk about eco-cities in China. But the excitement was sometimes short-lived. For, as is the case in so many other examples of my elevated hopes, they were dashed by inadequate implementation. The next critical step in China's new-found prominence in the field of sustainable development needs to be concrete demonstration of doing what needs to be done.
Taking the right advice is critical. It makes little sense to listen to those who haven't succeeded themselves in achieving any degree of sustainable development. Listening to the very same bankers that have brought the world economy to its knees makes no sense at all.
The principles of sustainable development are easy enough to understand. They simply require that we look to nature for guiding principles.
All systems on earth are ultimately powered by the energy of the sun. With respect to matter, the earth is a closed system. There is a finite amount of physical resources at our disposal.
Based on the false assumptions of unlimited natural resources to draw from, unlimited ecosystem services to support us and unlimited places to put our wastes, human society has evolved linear economic systems that take natural resources, make products and then dispose of them as waste when they are no longer useful to us.
Sooner or later, in a finite world, this one-way industrial process must end. The solution to all problems is not simply more consumption. It concerns me to hear China being given the advice that it needs to consume its way out of the economic mess that the West has created. "People in China save too much," say the pundits. "They need to buy more to stimulate the economy."
I agree with Professor Zhu's plea to "jettison the possession-oriented mindset." To follow the way of the mass consumer society of the US in China would be a disaster of epic proportions.
To create a sustainable society it will certainly require less consumption of offending goods and services (those that violate the natural guiding principles stated above), and their substitution by more benign and cost-effective alternatives.
For example, China has now become the largest maker and market of automobiles in the world. A major feat and an awesome responsibility, because China cannot go the way of the other industrialized societies before it.
It is clear that the internal combustion engine and the tons of molded steel it propels have been a major cause of many of our most prominent urban and environmental problems. These gas guzzlers are not only major polluters (polluted air, acid rain, noise pollution, global warming; not to mention the foreign policy consequences of dependence on imported oil), they also require that the country's communities, both urban and rural, be designed to accommodate them.
Cars are cars
China's focus and manufacturing expertise in electric cars is encouraging, but cars are cars. Whether powered by green technologies or not, they will make their contribution to the damage to urban neighborhoods and communities, highway congestion and deaths, the loss of biological diversity, the damage to fragile landscapes, and urban sprawl.
China is poised to lead the world on a different path of development - one in which the linear industrial processes of the past are converted into a circular economy emulating the processes of natural systems driven by the power of the sun and cycling their substance in pursuit of meeting the needs of all its members.
To do this, it makes little sense to follow the failed examples and flawed advice of those who have gone before.
In the opening to a market economy, China must retain its socialist perspectives of internalizing the external social and environmental costs of a single-minded market and provide for all of its citizens. This is not something you will hear from the architects of our current economic crisis.
The World Expo 2010 offers a grand opportunity to usher in a Green Leap Forward. Demonstrations and expertise from all around the world will be on display - these could and should serve as a catalyst for combining China's expressed will with ways for its implementation.
But it will take more than a few isolated demonstrations and image-building promotional campaigns. There needs to be wide-spread application of these best practices across the board in all new building and construction projects. I am looking forward to seeing that happen.
(The author is a former professor from the University of California and Stanford University, teaching environmental conservation, technology transfer and sustainable development. He is now living and working in Shanghai. The views are his own. His email: suttonleming@gmail.com)
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