རྟིན་འབྱུང
Trenjung: A Journal of Interconnections
Yet another old rejected essay! This one though explains somewhat where the genesis for the Green China (Ecoharmonium of Taiwan Tibet and China) idea in the "Chronicles of a New Tibet" came from.
Green Star
Over China?
By D. H. Garrett
I am not a writer by trade. Any poor reader who inadvertently stumbles
into the accident of my thinking, realizes that at most after wading two or
three sentences deep into the morass.
That said I was struck by the rejection of the original version of this
essay (sans question mark and this preface) by multiple editors worldwide. Was something more at work here than my
simple clumsiness with words? Nah,
probably not. As one editor put it, “for us to publish a piece that argues, against the
conventional wisdom, that China is a committed green economy, it would need to
marshal a lot more in the way of evidence, data, etc. to support its case.” So I did a quick Google and added four
references.1)2)3)4) The first points out that since 2009 China has
led all the G-20 countries in clean energy investment. The second elucidates the fact that China’s
State Council estimates it will spend $380 billion on conservation and
emissions cuts through 2015, driven by a recognition that pollution is driving
social unrest. The third highlights data
showing that China spends 1/6th of what the U.S. spends on its
military and invests twice as much in clean energy technology. The fourth -on my favorite climate blogsite (
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/ ) states that in 2012 for the first time
Chinese wind power production increased more than Chinese coal power
production.
So I
thought I had laid that valid criticism to rest and went on to the next
editor’s rejection which was basically that it was a “puff piece.” Yes, some truth also to that. I had gone to Shanghai to talk at the “Fifth World Forum on China Studies” as
part of a panel called, “China’s Road: Ecological Civilization and Sustainable
Development.” My own presentation “Water
in Extremis” was on the effects of climate change on the hydrological cycle,
and basically I concluded from the widespread projections of widespread drought
and the crazy effects that a warming Arctic was having on Rossby waves that we
were headed for a period of societal collapse.
So I wasn’t exactly a Pollyanna.
I even, hoping to be helpful to my hosts, said that the beast that had
hit NYC (Superstorm Sandy) was still out there and could strike almost
anywhere, and so I hoped Shanghai was prepared.
But after following as best I could the simultaneous translation of the
panel discussion through an ill-fitting-to-my-misshapen-ears plastic earpiece
that was making me wish I could produce endorphins and enkaphalins at will, and
after spending several days talking with leading Chinese scientists, academics
and government officials, it was clear, even to a climate change alarmist like
me (http://www.opendemocracy.net/daniel-h-garrett/letter-from-unapologetic-alarmist
) that they got it, and were going to do their best. Yes, it’s true, China has its coal barons,
its selfishly short-sighted industrialists and it’s party officials who still
think that the old mantra of “pollute now, clean up later” as classically it
was done in the destructive course of Western development, was what China also
needed to do. And yes, there remain
many, too many, poor and desperate Chinese who would sell out their children
and grandchildren’s health for a slim slice of the glimmering faux happiness
implanted in them by the consumerist colonizers of the world minds, so yes, it
was a puff piece which presented the aspirations of the best of China’s climate
change and environmental degradation-aware leaders. It was a puff piece in so far as it did not
talk about what they were up against.
But we all know that, don’t we?
And
finally, though it wasn’t addressed personally to me in a rejection, one of my
favorite political/strategic/moral writers made a statement about China on his
blogsite ( http://www.tomdispatch.com )5
a few days after I had sent him a copy of my essay which, closet egomaniac that
part of me no doubt is, I took as a slam-dunk rebuttal. He said “Even if you set aside the man-made
environmental disaster that is China (at a cost now estimated conservatively
at $230 billion annually)…” and I thought about it and I thought about and
agreed with him and yet I didn’t. China
-to a large extent because Western (and Japanese, and Korean) corporations find
they can make more money by locating production there, and Western (and
Japanese and Korean) consumers don't hold those companies accountable for the
human and environmental misery they cause- has some of the most horrific environmental
disasters on the planet, and yet, having traveled widely in China, there remain
many areas of unearthly beauty. And most
importantly perhaps, and this was the main focus of my little essay, most
Chinese, in their Chinese heart of hearts, have a sense of what an “Ecological
Civilization” could be, and it is this sense, I believe, atavistic, futuristic though
it may be in equal parts, which will drive China, as much as survival, to
become Green China. And now, without further ado, I continue with the original
essay. If you are reading this, then
well, the preface worked, if not, well there are better ways to spend one’s
time.
Largely
unknown to the rest of the world, which think mostly of its factories, and
pollution, and its exploding class of new consumers, China has begun the
greatest revolution in its long history. It is a revolution the likes and scale
of which has never been tried before, and -unlike the Communist Revolution
which struck terror in the hearts of many in the West and in its Cultural
Revolution phase devoured its own children, Chinese and Tibetan alike- this
revolution, if successful, may well save the world from the ravages wrought
upon it by our machine-and-profit-above-all culture: the ravages of climate
change which has us teetering on the brink of our own demise; resource
depletion which will leave us little better than packs of starving dogs
fighting over the last bone; and species extinction which will leave us, if
there are any of us left, alone and sheltering having killed most of our fellow
planetary sojourners with nary an attempt at coexistence.
China has decided to become Green
China. In looking for a
worthy dream to strive for over the coming generations -a dream perhaps to
compete with the American Dream (which it's most wealthy and powerful
beneficiaries have so horribly besmirched)- in looking for that dream -one
whose beauty drew one to it, one whose wise necessity would inspire in equal
parts courage ingenuity and joy- in looking within themselves for this dream,
they found themselves. They found that
they did not want to be robots in some European metaphysical schema. They did not want to be empty numbers in the
equations of mad economists who had forgotten the human in human striving. No, they looked within themselves, discovered
that they were Chinese, and that as Chinese they had an innate sense of beauty
which above all placed them as happiest when part of a vibrant, a verdant, a
healthy, a growing and flowering multi-seasoned natural world.
They looked within themselves and
realized that what they most deeply admired, and what they considered to be a
civilization worthy of the name “Civilization” was in fact, an Ecocivilization,
and this is what they have decided to become.
You might ask, how through the horrors of the Beijing smog, were they
able to see this? How in the foul
chemical-cursed and pig corpse corrupted rivers were they able to see down to a
blue-pure soul where fish frolicked in sparkling shallows? Amidst all of the horrors, ecological and
human, that the world, and China had inflicted upon itself in order to become
the prime makers of all things material, every Chinese still had within his or
herself a memory, even if buried under sewage, of blue skies where the
occasional dragon frolicked, of streams and rivers so clean and clear the fish
could be ink-brushed in every scale of silver-golden detail, and of mountains
where their other half, the free Taoist complement to their Confucian
discipline, could caress with the winds themselves endless slopes of bamboo
ecstasy. They looked within themselves,
at the edge of the abyss of the death of the natural world, and said, no, this
must stop.
It is true that the cleanup itself
will be a monumental task. It is true
that a rapid transition to sustainable energy and non-polluting systems of
transport and manufacture will be a monumentally monumental task. And who will deny that reaching the
Chomolungma heights of an Ecocivilization -in which all human technologies in
the highest of high-tech bio-mimicry ways are seamlessly, harmoniously, wedded
to the complexity of complexities that is the efflorescence of natural systems
and their wondrous living technologies- who will doubt that it will require the
best of the human spirit and mind if it is to arch itself up into realms of
possibilities beyond what it had thought previously possible. Who will deny
that reaching those eternally soaring but most down-to-earth of heights, will
require much from all of us, but in particular because of their centrality and
number, it will require the creative genius of every naturally-creative
creative genius of a Chinese child for many generations to come. But no one manages quick transformations like
the Qigong masters of time, the Chinese, so maybe, hopefully, in the
transformation to Green China they will also, -presto chango- surprise us. For this is not just about beauty and hope,
this is also about survival, ours as well as theirs.
There is a green star rising over
China. We need it to succeed. If it does
not we will all tumble into the dead rabbit hole of abrupt climate change and
ecosystem collapse, and getting out -if we even can- will not be easy. But if they succeed, and succeed they must,
for their own sake, for our own sake, then they will have earned, gratefully,
their place, as the Middle Kingdom, as the deservedly admired and courted
center of a saved-in-the-nick-of-time Kuan Yin, of a Chinese Gaia world. One that is verdant, resplendent, a blue
pearl of a magic water planet, the true magic pill of immortality, a life lived
harmoniously with all life on earth, a living planet sailing serenely, almost
forever, through the shimmering shoals of the stars.
References
1. “Who’s Winning the
Clean Energy Race?” The Pew Charitable Trusts Energyhttp://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Global_warming/G-20%20Report.pdf
2. “China Vows to Curb Emissions as Pollution Fuels Social
Unrest” Bloomberg News http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/china-vows-to-curb-emissions-as-pollution-fuels-social-unrest.html
3. “Military v climate
spending: How China outguns the US on clean energy” The Guardian
4. “China’s Wind Power
Production Increased More Than Coal Power Did For First Time Ever In 2012”
Climate Progress
5. “Tomgram: Steve Fraser, A Disaster for All Seasons” http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175678/tomgram%3A_steve_fraser,_a_disaster_for_all_seasons/
Authors Note: Daniel
Garrett is a former U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer. These are
his impressions after speaking on “Water In Extremis: Water and the
Possibilities for a Green (Ecocatastrophe-Avoiding) Renaissance” as part of the
“China’s Road: Ecological Civilization and Sustainable Development” panel at
the Fifth World Forum on China Studies held in Shanghai China, March 23-24,
2013. DISCLAIMER: The views expressed herein are solely those of
the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of
State or the U.S. Government.
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