HANGZHOU, China — Until the early 1990s, crews on barges and boats chugging down China’s 2,400-year-old Grand Canal did not need familiar landmarks to tell them they were approaching the scenic city of Hangzhou.
They could smell it.
“The water was black,” said Zhu Jianbai, assistant director of the city government’s Grand Canal Restoration and Development Group. “There was no life in it. If you lived beside it, you had to live with the stink. It was an embarrassment.”
But a $250 million makeover that began in 2001 has improved water quality and spurred urban renewal along a 24-mile section of this ancient transport artery that once connected China’s great west-to-east river systems, carrying the goods, taxes and official communications that sustained successive dynasties.
Today, small fish swim among the pylons supporting cargo wharves where effluent from factories and raw sewage from homes had poisoned this section of the world’s oldest man-made waterway. Walkways and parkland line sections of the canal, and some of China’s most expensive apartment buildings have sprung up beside it on what has become prime real estate. Water taxis connect historic piers and bridges along the winding route through the city where old shop houses and tenements are being restored.
Most remarkably, the canal no longer smells.
On my two trips across China, covering more than half the country’s provinces, Mr. Zhu’s feelings are close to my own impressions of China. The country had a long and rich history and was potentially beautiful—yet the lack of any environmental conscious made it filthier than perhaps anywhere else on the planet. And in my experience, the environmental condition of China in 2003 was notable worse than other areas I had seen in the former USSR and parts of the Third World.
Yet I always had cause for hope when considering the case of Japan. My late grandfather remembers that in post-war Tokyo, people wore elevated shoes because sewage ran openly in the streets. Today, Tokyo is one of the cleanest capital cities in the world, and Japan as a country is generally very clean. Because countries don’t develop with clean environments—they reach a critical mass of wealth where the population demands certain minimum requirements for hygiene and clean air and water.
Perhaps China can follow Japan’s path, as environmental awareness increases. Hangzhou’s ultimate goal is to persuade the United Nations to list the canal as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Two British animal rights campaigners clad in nothing more than bikinis made of lettuce leaves braved freezing temperatures on Tuesday to urge the people of Kazakhstan to stop eating horses and go vegetarian.
“Whereas Borat is ridiculing the country, we’re trying to come here with a positive message,” Yvonne Taylor, 35, told Reuters. “We’re saying that going vegetarian is the best thing people can do for their health and to stop animals suffering.”
Kazakhstan’s national cuisine is almost entirely meat-based. Horse sausage and boiled sheep’s head are delicacies while lamb and offal are part of the staple diet.
The reaction on the street?
Passers-by, including groups of schoolchildren visiting the monument, gave the PETA campaigners a mixed reaction.
“I guess they are trying to encourage kids to eat their greens which is okay,” Tursunai, a school teacher, said as she watched the campaigners, who call themselves “Lettuce Ladies”, hand Russian-language leaflets to the children.
But pensioner Maria Amantayeva, walking past the monument with her husband, was less impressed. She said the only problem with meat in Kazakhstan was it was now too expensive. “Kazakhs have eaten meat for generations and many have lived into their 90s or to 100,” she said. “Why are men so weak today? I’ll tell you, they don’t eat enough meat.”
I happened upon this old post of Dr. Barnett on Jared Diamond’s Collapse and would like to take this moment to share with readers both Dr. Barnett’s comment and my response.
Thumbed through Jared Diamond’s Collapse recently, and while I liked the environmental analysis for what it’s worth, his take on politics and globalization is like looking through a soda straw. It always amuses me how hard scientists freak whenever soft scientists borrow from their fields, but then have no problem prognosticating like crazy about soft science fields like political science. For example, Diamond posts these two, amazingly self-serving maps on page 497. On top is the list of “Political Trouble Spots of the Modern World,” and just below it is the map of “Environmental Trouble Spots of the Modern World.” His two maps are exactly the same, hence his point that environmental problems accurately predict all political trouble spots is “proven.” … I mean, geez, this is comically bad analysis.
Why am I not surprised that, of Collapse’s single-spaced 592 pages on the history of human civilization and the environment, Dr. Barnett decides to flip through, find the only non-photo visual, and judge a quarter of a million word book on such specious grounds? Oh yeah, that’s why I’m not surprised.
Allow me to enlighten you, Dr. Barnett: Collapse is a tour de force review of 1) behavior and systemic breakdowns that lead to poor societal choices, 2) a look at historic and modern environmental breakdown that followed collapse of civilizations, and 3) a diagnosis of the world today and the threats to modern civilization. Science magazine called it “probably the most important book you will ever read.”
I know the post quoted above is more than a year old, and I know that Tom has been working on his manners and his tone as of late, and in the same post he says he will talk more about it on the air:
At 1pm today I’ll do a live radio interview with a local station in Connecticut from above the garage. It’ll be 18-22 minutes and it’ll be on the book.
Great, and I wish I could listen to the whole thing. But Tom has no follow-up, and the only material I found through google regarding Barnett on Diamond was this piece.
There are many who respond to concerns of overpopulation and resource scarcity that, “human ingenuity has always helped us in the past, so I’m sure it will triumph in the future.” Barnett, and many readers of this blog, adhere to this school of thought. Yet this vein of thinking ignores one very real possibility: that the only reason human ingenuity has succeeded in the past is because people were fretting their face off that the world would end. Said otherwise, it is possible that Malthus’ prediction has not come true because his warning was so dire and influential.
SIDENOTE: If you understand the title of this post—good for you!
In The Skeptical Environmentalist, provocative Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg gave a unorthodox take on environmental policy. Using data and statistics, he argues that essentially every sacred cow of the feverish environmentalist movement—global warming, overpopulation, declining energy resources, deforestation, species loss, and water shortages—are exaggerated concerns unsupported by real analysis. Lomborg excoriates the environmental movement, and his work has transformed how policymakers view environmental policy.
In marked contrast is Jarrod Diamond’s Collapse, which suggests quite another view of how we should examine the environment. Throughout history, warnings about imminent ecological destruction—whether it be deforestation, climate change, resource scarcity, or overpopulation—were ignored by many societies at their peril. The threat of environmental degradation and exhausted resources can destroy civilizations.
A review in Nature called Diamond’s book a “necessary antidote” to Lomborg’s. I think that says it best—to properly understand the importance of the environment requires the layman to read both. (Both authors like the other’s work. Diamond recommends Lomborg’s book in his “Further Reading” section, and Lomborg recently stated that the book he wishes he had written was Collapse.) And I think the viewpoint that emerges from reading both texts is that of a solid realist.
The fuss about climate change is absurd considering the bigger problems we face—overpopulation, resource scarcity, and the coming energy crunch. (Yes, the earth’s climate is changing, and human’s are likely affecting it, but the causes are not as simple as too much CO2 and the costs required to make even the slightest dent in climate change would cost trillions of dollars.)
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore energy and resource saving measures. We have a sustainability problem. We are already seeing a scarcity of energy and resources at six billion people today. How will we do in half a century with nine billion people and, we hope, more people enjoying modern prosperity? I hope that human awareness of environmental problems can lead to economic and sustainable environmental management. Because in the final analysis, that’s the only way we can protect modern civilization.
A close friend insisted I see the “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth, starring Al Gore. So I finally downloaded it and watched it twice.
As an analysis of what is happening to the world, the movie is excellent. Al Gore has taken a page from Tom Barnett and gives flat rhetoric some spice with a powerful media presentation. Humans are affecting climate change, and it has consequences.
But on top of the science is a healthy dose of fear. That the same people who insist the War on Terrorism is based on fear then found this movie a “wake-up call” strikes me as tragically ironic. The movie is essentially a slick propaganda piece, with vivid images of glaciers falling into the sea, pictures of big waves, hurricanes, the spectre of millions of refugees, and a poor CGI polar bear swimming in a vast ocean. (Don’t believe me? See the trailer below.) It’s propaganda, plain and simple, and knowing propaganda’s effect on weak minds, it doesn’t surprise me that so manybloggers write of the movie, “I feel so empowered. I want to go do something!” While it’s inappropriate to compare the film with Goebbels, that is what critics meant when they dismissed the film as Nazi-esque.
So yes, the earth is getting warmer. Of course, the earth’s weather has never been static. Mr. Gore notes in his presentation that North America used to be covered with glaciers. That the American midwest is now entirely glacier-free is seen by most to be a good thing, but it was a result of climate change. Why climate change is only bad when it happens today is not addressed in the film.
But beyond those niggling details, the film is most frustrating because while it is an excellent explanation, it does not address a solution, at least not within the realm of reality. The film’s bumper-sticker slogan is “People not cars!” Yes, the sum of the film’s solutions honestly can’t even muster a complete sentence. While you watch the credits, you are invited to go to Carbusters.org. And lower your thermostate. And insulate your house. Oh yeah, and pray. (No, I’m not kidding. Not surprising when you consider that environmentalism has become the religion for people desperate to believe in something that doesn’t require them to kneel in a pew.)
I’d encourage all readers to take energy saving measures to protect themselves and conserve energy resources, not abstractly “protect the environment” (which these methods will not do). These habits are great for the reasons I give. But anyone who thinks that it will put even the smallest dent in climate change has got to be kidding.
Not that personal responsibility isn’t important. But the hypocrisy and hubris of this man is galling beyond words. He gripes that the earth’s population is too big, exploding from two billion people to when Gore was born to more than six billion today. Since Gore is going on about how “you can make a difference,” perhaps he’d like to explain why he decided to have four children if he knew/believes the population explosion to be such a threat?
For macro-solutions, Gore grumpily notes that every developed country but America and Australia have signed the Kyoto Protocol, ignoring the two solid reasons for rejecting it. First, the agreement imposes a vastly disproportionate burden on the United States, which the United States Senate duly noted in its rejection of the treaty by a whopping 97-0 votes. Not John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer or any other liberal Democratic Senator voted to approve it. (Would Senator Gore have voted differently? If so, let him say it.) Second, it calls CO2 “pollution,” which is about as retarded as an environmental policy can be. Nature produces the vast, vast majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere, anywhere from 80-97%. Why we need to speed trillions of dollars to reduce the anthropogenic CO2 is absurd when we consider that CO2 is the same whether it comes from an SUV, Al Gore’s lungs, or a swamp in the Amazon. That the causes of climate change are more complicated than just CO2 is not a discussion that could be had with the feverish environmental evangelical crowd.
Gore finishes the speech with a passionate plea for action (with no answers) by vaguely asserting that we can “defeat” global warming (how this would happen he does not say). He invokes previous progressive accomplishments as evidence that we have the power to cool the earth:
Women earned the right to vote, first in New Zealand, then in Scandanavia, and it spread from there. The entire world defeated fascism in both Europe and the Pacific simultaneously!
Actually, Mr. Vice President, women first “earned” the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869, a solid quarter-century before New Zealand, from where it spread to Colorado and Utah. You’ll have to explain to me your views of geography and 19th century transit if you want to make me believe that women’s suffrage started in New Zealand only to spread to northern Europe. Indeed, if you know anything about the Women’s Suffrage Movement you know it built its momentum for decades in several separate regions across the Western world, and the actual right to vote didn’t really “spread” from anywhere, although the US played an enormous role in spreading the franchise in the modern era, such as Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
And the world didn’t defeat fascism in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously, the US did. From a point of both historical accuracy and pride as an American I’d sort of expect Mr. Gore to emphasize these things, but this just goes to show how warped this man’s moral compass is. He’s eager to give anyone credit for an achievement as long as its not the United States. If the US is involved, he’ll do as much as he can to downplay its role. So I’m not surprised that of all the things to be concerned about in the world today, Mr. Gore decides to pick a cause where the US, as the largest economy in the world, may be the greatest contributor.
UPDATE: You can see the movie trailer below. Sort of has a Dawn of the Dead feel to it. And I like the ending.
I’m halfway through Jared Diamond’s Collapse as I write this, and the tales of societal implosion in Greenland, Easter Island and elsewhere make me dread the future. In my (expected) lifetime this planet’s population will grow from 4 billion to 9 billion. With the rapid increase in resource consumption on all levels on every corner of the planet, I can’t help but fear that the impending decline of resources will result in a massive systems failure, a breakdown of civilization, a population diefoff… and… what’s the word I’m looking for… yeah, a collapse.
But in the meantime, Slate has this article which reminds me that the human species faces no danger of running out starvation in the near future. Far from it—we are feeding ourselves to death.
In 1894, Congress established Labor Day to honor those who “from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” In the century since, the grandeur of human achievement has multiplied. Over the past four decades, global population has doubled, but food output, driven by increases in productivity, has outpaced it. Poverty, infant mortality, and hunger are receding. For the first time in our planet’s history, a species no longer lives at the mercy of scarcity. We have learned to feed ourselves.
We’ve learned so well, in fact, that we’re getting fat. Not just the United States or Europe, but the whole world. Egyptian, Mexican, and South African women are now as fat as Americans. Far more Filipino adults are now overweight than underweight. In China, one in five adults is too heavy, and the rate of overweight in children is 28 times higher than it was two decades ago. In Thailand, Kuwait, and Tunisia, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are soaring…
Technologically, this is a triumph. In the early days of our species, even the rich starved. Barry Popkin, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, divides history into several epochs. In the hunter-gatherer era, if we didn’t find food, we died. In the agricultural era, if our crops perished, we died. In the industrial era, famine receded, but infectious diseases killed us. Now we’ve achieved such control over nature that we’re dying not of starvation or infection, but of abundance. Nature isn’t killing us. We’re killing ourselves.
Previewing the final quarter of Bush’s presidency, officials disclosed to TIME that the Administration is formulating a huge energy initiative designed to “change the whole nature of the discussion” and challenge the G.O.P., Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and environmentalists. An adviser said Bush’s views about global warming have evolved. “Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bush and Cheney—two oilmen—can bring all these parties kicking and screaming to the table,” the adviser said.
Whatever the coming months hold, Bush advisers said they could safely predict there would be no more Dr. Phil—speak. The President doesn’t fret in private, they say, so he won’t in public. A friend said Bush hopes his ultimate legacy will be that he engaged the war on terrorism and started a multigenerational process of winning it, the way Harry Truman began winning the cold war. No one remembers Harry Truman ruminating about the nation’s temperament.
Another interesting bit. As Bush slowly ups the rhetoric. First we were addicted to oil and now Bush and the so-called Grand Oil Party are going to finally start America on the road to energy efficiency. Energy independence is a popular buzzword among political amatuers and leftists that is both unrealistic and ridiculous. Efficiency, however, creates a more resiliant country, positively impacting the environment, national security, our war machine, and so on and so forth. It’s high time to do so and oh yeah, what will this leave the Democrats with?
SIDENOTE: Curzon is still biking around northern Japan and I’m still at home in America visiting friends and family and roadtripping all about. Posting will remain light. Bear with us. Curzon and I will both be back to our regular posting schedule in about two weeks.
In international waters off the shore of the US and Cuba—but within the sovereign boundaries of neither— sits possible oil and gas reserves. You would have thought that the US would have tried to exploit this years ago, with rising fuel prices and increasingly scarce sources of new oil. It turns out that we haven’t because of the pressures of various interest groups. And Cuba is reaping the rewards from our inaction.
Cuba drills for oil off Florida; Deadlock hurts U.S. fuel efforts
Cuba is drilling for oil 60 miles off the coast of Florida with help from China, Canada and Spain even as Congress struggles to end years of deadlock over drilling for what could be a treasure trove of offshore oil and gas.
Republicans in Congress have tried repeatedly in the past decade to open up the outer continental shelf to exploration, and Florida’s waters hold some of the most promising prospects for major energy finds. Their efforts have been frustrated by opposition from Florida, California and environmental-minded legislators from both parties.
Why am I not surprised? It turns out that several interest groups have, as they regularly do, interferred with what is best for America on the grounds that their constituencies will be damaged.
Florida’s powerful tourism and booming real estate industries fear that oil spills could cost them business. Lawmakers from the state are so adamantly opposed to drilling that they have bid to extend the national ban on drilling activity from 100 miles to as far as 250 miles offshore, encompassing the island of Cuba.
The result of all this is that if oil is found in commercially viable quantities, Cuba could be transformed from an oil importer into another Venezuela.
Gibbons wrote about the collapse of Rome. Lewis addressed what went wrong with Islam. But few have addressed why the majestic ruins of Angkor Wat were abandoned. Ancient Thai annals have led us to believe that Burmese or Siam invaders were ultimately responsible for the city’s downfall. But Australian archaeologist Roland Fletcher believes he has found a more mundane answer: the environment.
The Angkor Wat structures were probably both religious and political in nature, but they were also an integrated water-management system. Fletcher notes that the complex (stretching for hundreds of square miles) centered on three great reservoirs that diverted water from the Puok, Roluos, and Siem Reap rivers. Canals and sewage built around these rivers and reservoirs allowed for a vast urban complex with a low-density patchwork of homes and temples. At its height, Angkor was home to an estimated one million people. Yet this water system was also the achilles heal of the Empire. When the rivers dried up, a combination of infrastructure collapse and environmental degradation likely destroyed this once extraordinary medieval civilization. Rack up another case study for the Harm de Blij and Jared Diamond school of geography.
Both Younghusband and myself have traveled to Angkor Wat on seperate occasions and spent days exploring the ruins. Digging through some travel photographs, I found quite a few pictures evidencing the now desiccated waterworks that kept Angkor functioning centuries ago.
A more complete article on the subject can be read in the 10 March 2006 issue of Science, available in pdf here.
HANGZHOU, China — Until the early 1990s, crews on barges and boats chugging down China’s 2,400-year-old Grand Canal did not need familiar landmarks to tell them they were approaching the scenic city of Hangzhou.
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