Of all the rotten jobs in the world today, you’d have to put Energy Secretary of the United States of America quite close to the top of any list. The current incumbent is Steve Chu, an eminent scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, and a wonderfully reasonable and humane man.
But faced with an implacably hostile Republican majority in the House of Representatives, ignored by the majority of gas-guzzling US citizens, hemmed in by the still redoubtable coal and oil lobbies, and reviled by the rest of the world for blocking (all over again) any serious progress on international Climate Negotiations, he must yearn for the relatively untroubled groves of academe.
So the speech he gave in the run- up to the Cancun Climate Change Conference in December last year struck a particular note with me. Shifting the focus away from climate change as such and on to the whole question of economic competitiveness (in which even the somewhat deranged Tea Party has an interest!), he made a fascinating comparison with what he called the ‘Sputnik Moment’ back in the 1960s – when the Russians beat the United States to be the first nation in space – and the threat to the US economy today from the burgeoning growth of ‘cleantech’ industries in China. Outraged by
© Forum of the Furture
Russia’s lèse-majesté at that time, the US went all out to win ‘the space race’. Fifty years on, will we see a similar response to the cleantech threat from China?
I am sure there will be some of you thinking that I’ve lost my marbles in offering up China as the benchmark for cleantech ambition. After all, they are still building dozens of vast new coal-fired power stations, and have one of the most degraded environments in the world. But they are also investing around $40billion a year in cleantech businesses (renewable energy, storage technologies, water and waste, smart grids and so on), and already lead the world in five different types of renewable energy.
Their new Five Year Plan (out in April) tells us two things we should be very clear about: they know that accelerating climate change is going to have a devastating impact on their people, and they know that
the future will be an ultra-low-carbon, hyper-efficient future – which is why they are going all out now to build the industries that will allow them to thrive in that very different world.
THE
As it happens, that isn’t necessarily China’s biggest challenge. Dealing with its built environment may prove to be a much tougher nut to crack. China’s cities have grown at an astonishing rate over the last 30 years, with at least 350 million people migrating in from its rural hinterland. The vast majority of those buildings (and of the new schools, hospitals, offices, factories, retail centres that accompany them) were just thrown up as cheaply and cheerfully as possible, with little if any thought for energy efficiency let alone emissions of greenhouse gases.
GREEN DEAL
By Jonathon Porritt, Founder, Forum for the Future
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www.bluesky-world.com © GeoPerspectivesTM |56| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
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