Latest Articles by Sam Geall

Carbon awareness and accountability

James Cameron, Sam Geall — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 12:06:00 +0000

The Carbon Disclosure Project aims to encourage the world’s biggest companies to reveal their greenhouse-gas emissions. The project’s chair, James Cameron, tells Sam Geall about its development and the role Chinese companies can play.

The Carbon Disclosure Project was launched six years ago, with the support of the British government, as an innovative device to encourage the world’s biggest companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. In 2006, the project was undertaken for the fourth time. Over two hundred institutional investors, with assets of US$31.5 trillion under management, signed a single global request for disclosure of information on their greenhouse gas emissions to 2180 companies, including the FT500 largest companies in the world.

Sam Geall: Briefly, what are the goals of the Carbon Disclosure Project?

James Cameron: The Carbon Disclosure Project is a philanthropic initiative, to construct a dialogue between the institutionary investor community and large publicly listed corporations on the subject of climate change.

SG: You have now published the responses to the fourth Carbon Disclosure Project. How has the project developed since it first launched?

JC: It has developed rather remarkably. Year on year, a larger number of investor companies have signed the letter, a larger number of companies have received and responded to the letter, and there has been a significant increase in the amount of money that makes the request through the Carbon Disclosure Project letter.

The quality of the responses has also improved. So there is a quantitative and qualitative improvement year on year. Now we have 225 institutions asking in the order of 2000 companies what they understand by climate risk to their business and what they are doing about it. That constitutes US$31.5 trillion under management – a significant proportion of the global emissions of greenhouse gases. It really does matter. Some significant scale has been achieved in four years of the process.

SG: The project seems to have been very effective at raising awareness of companies’ carbon emissions. How much do you see this translating into action by companies and investors?

JC: I think it would be immodest and unrealistic to expect four years of awareness-raising to translate into a significant shift in the way either investor company assets or corporate assets are directed. However, the gap between awareness and action has been highlighted this year. In every presentation event and every launch event that we’ve held, that issue has come up and has been a question in the audience’s mind, and the message has been received and understood on both sides of the dialogue.

I don’t want to exaggerate this, because the first steps have been very modest indeed, and they match modest steps that governments have made to alter the conditions for investment in ways that favour the reduction of greenhouse gases. But we do now have, at last, a carbon market. It’s in its infancy, but it’s real. It enables a price for carbon to be established and it enables investors to invest in that marketplace. Every single penny that they invest reduces greenhouse-gas emissions, which therefore reduces risk to them, across the whole of the portfolio.

Putting on my other hat [as vice chairman of] Climate Change Capital, having just raised in the order of a billion dollars for a specialist carbon fund (which has attracted investment out of those big institutional investors who are Carbon Disclosure Project-signatories) is very significant for the carbon market. But not compared to the amount of money that’s flowing in a direction which increases risk.

SG: What was the response to the Carbon Disclosure Project from Chinese companies?

JC: The response was mixed. For instance, Sun Hung Kai Properties, a Hong Kong-based real-estate management and development group, was one of the companies that failed to respond at all, despite the fact that 48.89% of the total common shares is held by the Carbon Disclosure Project 4 signatories. That is to say, virtually half of the stock of the company is owned by the people asking for the response, but they didn’t respond. You can’t make out any case that real-estate management and development is unaffected by climate change.

However, if we look at Asia as a whole, the responses are pretty good. But it’s in its early stages. There are 39 companies that were contacted in Asia – 11 made no response, 12 declined, three provided information and 13 answered the questionnaire. So, 16 out of 39 provided something useful, which is not nearly as high as Europe, for example.

SG: It seems important than Chinese companies join in the project further.

JC: It’s absolutely crucial that the global nature of the problem is reflected in the global nature of the response. We live in a global investment market, with China increasingly attracting investment from overseas, and indeed investing itself overseas, building businesses that cross out of domestic markets.

SG: How do you think Chinese companies can be encouraged to participate?

JC: I think it’s to do with establishing credibility among institutional investors that they are aware of contemporary issues that matter in the world at large. I don’t claim that if you’re investing in China and you’re looking for returns in the emerging market as it is, that climate change is the top of your list of important criteria. But these big institutional investors – who command a very substantial proportion of the total amount of assets in the world that are available for investment, including investment in China -- have identified [climate change] as a key concern. China is increasingly associated with both the problem of climate change and the potential solutions to climate change.

So it makes absolute sense that the Chinese corporate world as well as the Chinese investment institutions act like everybody else and understand how to factor in climate risk to their businesses, learn how to mitigate the risk, learn how to invest and find opportunity – that they learn how to invest to avoid loss.

SG: How do you see the future of the project?

JC: I think it’s got some good momentum now. The Carbon Disclosure Project will work with other disclosure initiatives to make sure that we improve the quality of the data that we all get, that the data is comparable, that accounting standards develop so that one can compare properly the performance of businesses. If an investor is really committed to altering the way they invest, they need good metrics that they can rely upon. There’s still a lot of work to do there.

But looking ahead, I think maintaining consistency over disclosure will lead to more active engagement by the investment community in the policy realm, because they will be increasingly at risk unless governments intervene to establish and maintain the price of carbon – and possibly more intervention by regulators to ensure that the market is kept consistently informed about companies’ actions that increase systemic risk to the marketplace. So, I think maintaining this simple device will lead to increased effort in the policy-making realm and increased effort in the regulatory realm, both of which will make it easier for investors alter the way they allocate their capital.

James Cameron is the chair of the Carbon Disclosure Project and the vice chairman of Climate Change Capital, an investment banking group specialising in commercial opportunities created by a low-carbon economy.

Sam Geall is assistant editor of chinadialogue.

Homepage photo by Gareth Davies

Buyer beware

Sam Geall — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:38:00 +0000

The illegal wildlife trade threatens the survival of endangered species around the world. Sam Geall reports on London’s attempts to limit the trafficking, which links Europe, Asia and Africa.

Gir National Park hangs on the southern tip of western India’s Kathiawar peninsula, in the state of Gujarat. It is best known as the last refuge of the highly endangered Asiatic lion; all of the world’s remaining 350 lions live in the park. On March 6, reports emerged that three of the beasts had been found mutilated. Poachers had killed the animals deep in the park, but left their pelts behind. They had removed the claws, bones and skulls, all of which are highly prized as ingredients in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

Such tales of wild animal poaching would normally seem far removed from the streets of Britain’s capital. But they appear closer on a visit to the south London office of the Wildlife Crime Unit, where a vast haul of contraband – from stuffed leopards to jars of bear gall bladders – crowds every available surface. Here, the clandestine world that links criminals in India, China and London suddenly becomes all the more apparent.

“People make comparisons between this and the drugs trade,” says Andy Fisher, head of the unit. He indicates a black rhinoceros horn that was seized in a raid on a Chinese medicine shop in the capital. In 1970, over 100,000 black rhinos were thought to roam Africa. But poaching, driven by the demand for the horns – which are regarded as a fever-reducer in TCM – has reduced the population to around 2,600.

Fisher acknowledges that some similarities exist between the narcotics industry and the illegal traffic in endangered species, but continues, “There’s a basic difference, and that is that you can manufacture drugs, so you can control the supply.”

It’s a bleak picture of an increasingly globalised trade. “As rhinos become rarer, so the price of the horn goes up, which makes it more attractive to more poachers to kill more rhinos,” says Fisher. “The only way that you can stop that happening is to attack the demand for it, and the demand is generally in countries where you don’t get rhinos.”

And it is combating this demand that motivates Operation Charm, a project re-launched in November last year as a partnership between the Wildlife Crime Unit, the Greater London Authority and five international wildlife NGOs.

The initiative aims to tackle the trade in the world’s rarest animals – protected under the international CITES agreement – at the point of sale. It has principally targeted the selling of tiger, bear, rhinoceros and musk deer in London, and attempts to combine traditional law enforcement methods with partnerships in the TCM community and awareness-raising among consumers. One project, established with the support of the Federation of Chinese Medicine, encourages legal traders to advertise on their shop windows that they do not sell products made from threatened wildlife.

Operation Charm has targeted recent growth in London’s TCM industry, but where does this rise in sales come from – who buys medicines made from endangered species?

Not just members of the city’s Chinese community, says Fisher. In the past 15 years, the number of Chinese medicine shops in the capital has increased from around a dozen to almost 2,000, as a greater number of Britons seek alternative health products – outside of what some perceive as the empty materialism of western biomedicine. Fisher puts it succinctly: “Traditional Chinese Medicine has become trendy.”

This is in evidence where I live in east London; a handful of well-stocked Chinese medicine shops are within a five-minute walk of my home. I found no evidence that these establishments are selling any products made from rare species. And the majority of businesses do not. But with such a big increase in the overall market, concerns have been raised that the minority of businesses may sell such products may also be growing.

The message for the city’s consumers is a simple one: buyer beware. “The majority of people don’t think there’s an endangered species problem in this country,” says Fisher. “They think it’s all in Africa or Asia. But it’s here too…there are people in London who buy endangered species products without realising.”

In December last year, an Operation Charm investigation led to the prosecution of a southeast London man who had sold products containing bear, seahorse, saiga antelope and musk deer. Other investigations have led to the seizure of tiger bone wine, wild orchids and products containing deer. And it’s a problem that shows no sign of decreasing, as booming customer demand drives illegal procurement overseas.

Luxury markets

But London’s Chinese medicine sales are by no means alone in fuelling the international trade in rare species.

The stuffed corpses of two 10-day-old tigers stare down from a shelf in the unit’s office, mounted on gaudy wooden stands. Their eyelids, normally closed at such a young age, are held wide open by taxidermists’ glass eyes. The cubs had been killed for the gruesome, yet highly lucrative, trade in luxury ornaments.

The cubs are flanked by a stuffed leopard, a tiger-skin rug – and most bizarrely – the skull of a mountain gorilla, of which only 600 living creatures are thought to exist in the wild. All of these were once prized by wealthy collectors, who have little regard for the ecological consequences of their buying habits.

A raid on a barber’s shop in Mayfair, one of London’s most exclusive districts, turned up a haul of ivory shaving brushes that sold for £1,100 (around US$2,165) each. It is clear that conspicuous consumption among some members of the capital’s fashionable elite is helping to destroy worldwide biodiversity. But this is not a problem isolated to London, Milan and New York. Sadly, it is also an emerging trend in parts of the developing world, where wealthy elites in emerging nations such as China now demand products made from endangered species, including ivory, rare furs and shahtoosh – a very expensive fabric that is woven from the hair of the chiru (Tibetan antelope).

World demand for endangered species products is not going away, and may well increase as these new markets emerge, which makes it particularly worrying to discover that another group is now dangerously imperiled: the Wildlife Crime Unit itself, whose budget has been drastically reduced – and whose very existence may hang in the balance.

In February, wildlife NGOs wrote to the Mayor of London, who sets the budget for the Metropolitan Police Authority, noting that the Wildlife Crime Unit now only receives £80,000 (around US$157,500)a year – “a drop in the ocean” compared to the overall Metropolitan Police Authority budget of £2.5 billion (US$4.9 billion).

Robbie Marsland, UK director of wildlife charity IFAW, made clear his dismay. “The illegal trade in wildlife is second only to the illicit trade in drugs and arms, yet it receives a fraction of the resources,” Marsland said in a statement. “London is a significant market for endangered species products, and we fear closing the Wildlife Crime Unit would send a green light to criminals that the capital is open for business as usual.”

Combating the trade in illegal wildlife is important, dangerous work that links faraway places. In the end, a “green light” in London may signal the end of the road for creatures like India’s Asiatic lion.

Sam Geall is the deputy editor of chinadialogue

What is Cooler Living?

Sam Geall — Wed, 30 May 2007 17:04:00 +0000

Is shopping the new politics? Can young people really take responsibility for climate change? Will celebrity culture turn green? Sam Geall introduces a new debate on chinadialogue.

How can young people affect the world they will inherit? Why should they try? Our actions will determine how we live tomorrow: this can be a good thing: it means we can leave gifts for future generations – be they great works of art, ideas or technology. But what about the things that future generations won’t thank us for?

It is now clear that man-made climate change threatens all of us with natural disasters, drought, famine and a potentially catastrophic loss of biodiversity. Regardless of our age or where we live, we all bear some responsibility for what will happen in the future, through the impact of our lifestyles – what we do, the things we buy and the things we throw away.

Some people think that it’s up to governments and big business to sort it out, but Cooler Living asks: what about the rest of us? All over the world, ordinary people are seeking solutions and asking how they can reduce their impact on the planet to make the world a cleaner, safer place. Many people feel that the solutions really are in our hands or our pockets, if only we would use them. We talk about consumer power, ethical shopping, eco-design and sustainable consumption. Even big business and political parties now want to appear green. But what do these ideas really mean? Are they just ways to sell us more products? Or are they important ways of taking responsibility for our personal environmental footprint?

One thing is for sure: they are powerful, popular ideas that need to be discussed. And this is what Cooler Living is about: debating and exploring what it means to be a consumer and concerned about the environment.

Is shopping the new politics? Can young people really take responsibility for climate change? Will celebrity culture turn green? We hope you will help us find the answers.

Over the next year, chinadialogue will be hosting an online forum to investigate these questions. From the ethics of the Live Earth concerts to the carbon emissions of politicians who claim to represent us, we will be looking at what impact our lifestyles have on a warming planet, and we want to hear your opinions.

Should governments try to change our consumption habits? Should people in rich countries give up more than people in developing countries? Can universities become “carbon neutral”? What things can we do without? And what will you not give up? Let the Cooler Living debate begin.

Sam Geall is deputy editor of chinadialogue

Visit the Cooler Living forum!

China's new energy

Sam Geall — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:42:00 +0000

The Ashden Awards are presented to projects around the world that pioneer new approaches to sustainable energy. Sam Geall caught up with the winners of this year’s award for enterprise, a north China company who are transforming rural lives.

Al Gore with Pan Shijiao, director of Beijing Shenzhou Daxu Bio-energy Technology Company Ltd, winner of the Ashden Award for Enterprise.

“Today is the fifth day of burning and the most serious so far. Out in the street, cars are moving slowly with their headlights on because the visibility is only about 10 metres.” Ge Bo, writing on chinadialogue, described this terrifying scene last week, as farmers burning crop waste in the fields around Xuzhou shrouded the east China city in smoke.

Ge Bo’s testimony highlights the great proportions of China’s pollution crisis. But it also points to a positive example of how the country, due to the seriousness of its environmental challenges, can become what John Elkington and Jodie Thorpe have called “an incubator for solutions that can be applied worldwide.”

One of these radical solutions was developed by Beijing Shenzhou Daxu Bio-energy Technology Company (Daxu), a company based in Yanqing County, north of Beijing, who last night won the Enterprise Award at the 2007 Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. The prestigious award was announced at a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in London, and was addressed by former US vice president Al Gore.

Daxu designed a stove for use in rural areas, which uses either loose or compressed crop waste as fuel. The stove is over 40% efficient, and allows a meal to be cooked in 15 to 20 minutes with minimal smoke pollution, bringing a potential for radical improvement in the environment and health of farming families where it is sold.

Sarah Butler-Sloss, the chair of the Ashden Awards judging panel, said: “If these technologies were expanded and replicated on a large scale, they would play a significant role in helping us to tackle climate change and poverty. What we need now is the political will to scale-up and roll-out these solutions”

I caught up with Daxu’s director, Pan Shijiao, on the eve of the awards ceremony, and asked him about his innovative design…

chinadialogue: Firstly, congratulations on being nominated for an Ashden Award. Let’s start with the basics: what is the Daxu stove, and how does it work?

Pan Shijiao: Thank you for your kind words. My company produces a stove known as a biomass gasification stove. It’s different from a normal stove because it is not designed to use coal or firewood. Its design is also unique in two other ways. Firstly, it uses a chamber to burn biomass, before the resultant gases, such as carbon monoxide and methane, are carefully transported to secondary chamber with an additional air supply that helps to burn these gases too, so that the biomass is burned very efficiently. The second unique aspect is that the stove is fitted with technology that reduces the smoke and dust from burning the fuel. So the stove is not only energy-saving and very sustainable – since it allows users to replace coal with organic matter and biomass – but it also does not produce indoor air pollution, something farmers and householders like very much.

cd: What are the main advantages of using a biomass stove, as opposed to a regular stove?

PS: Our stove is small, but I think it can bring great benefits. It replaces the need for firewood in places where farmers traditionally use a lot of wood for cooking and heating, so it can help to mitigate deforestation in rural areas. In China, if a farmer lists the necessities of life at home they will always rank firewood in the very first place, before rice, vinegar, tea or anything else. We made some basic calculations, and found that each biomass stove can save at least 1,500 kilograms of firewood a year – so it really helps to conserve the forests.

It also helps reduce emissions by replacing coal, which is not a renewable resource. At the same time it can contribute greatly to the health and hygiene of the families that use it – especially children and women who often spend more time at home and do more cooking – because it has no smoke and is very clean, unlike dirty coal. And it reduces costs for farmers; they end up spending much less money on fuel, and a lot of farmers say they like this about our stove.

cd: The stove is designed to use local crop residues as fuel, after being made into briquettes. How are these crop residues normally disposed of in Yanqing county, where you developed the stove?

PS: There is a great amount of crop residue and waste in China. Statistics indicate that the country produces around 600 million tonnes of crop waste each year. Of this, a small part is used as fodder for livestock, and a small part is returned to the fields as organic fertiliser. But the majority is just left in the fields; very few people appreciate it. Farmers think it is just a useless by-product – and in many cases will set it on fire – a great waste of energy. This explains why Daxu designed a straw-based stove for use by rural householders; the process of briquetting is a way to use this energy. An average family in Yanqing county can use this straw to make a large number of briquettes free of charge. We estimate that about 1,500 kilograms of straw briquettes are sufficient for a year’s use for a whole family, and this could save about three tonnes of coal.

cd: What were their reactions of the local people who first tested the stove?

PS: Well, we have had to keep upgrading our stove to newer versions based on the responses, comments and complaints of the users. Now we are in the eighth generation of the Daxu stove. Everyone has being saying they like it, and have even called it the ideal type of stove, because it’s easy and safe for use by old and young alike. We had some difficult times developing this stove, but now the farmers say they like it and the gasification works well with high energy efficiency. Before, some farmers were finding it inconvenient and difficult to use, or were worried that it was unsafe. But now these problems have gone away and we’re doing really well.

cd: You have said that the Daxu stove is convenient and safe, and is now very popular with its users. But is it affordable for families in Yanqing county?

PS: That’s a good question, and we have had to tailor our designs to resolve this issue. In the end, we designed a number of stoves at different price levels, all of which keep the full functions of the stove but use different materials. Now we have some more expensive designs, intermediate level and cheaper versions of the Daxu stove, so families in different economic situations can all have access to the stove.

cd: We read in the newspapers only today that researchers in the Netherlands are saying China may have outstripped the US as the largest carbon-dioxide emitter in the world. How important were these concerns in your design?

PS: This is a larger question, and a complicated one. My feeling is that this big issue of China’s carbon-dioxide emissions really needs to be discussed, and there is a problem that must be resolved. But it is also encouraging to see that the Chinese government and policy makers have realised the importance of this issue very clearly. Not long ago our premier chaired a number of energy-saving and emissions reduction conferences, which were broadcast on live television across the country to remind officials of the need to conduct sustainable development, conserve energy and reduce emissions so that we can help in the global progress towards sustainable development.

As a manager of a small enterprise, I think I should run my own company very well and contribute to this process. We have a philosophy: to do practical things in terms of energy saving and emissions reductions, so that we can have a better environment. And in doing this we address the same environmental concerns as the central government. It’s my opinion that adopting these stoves across the country could reduce emissions by around 20%. There are currently some 200 million rural households in China, and almost all of them have coal stoves.

cd: Finally, how do you see in the future of renewable energy in China?

Renewable energy has been a priority on the agenda of the Chinese government, and perhaps my company is only a part of the practical expression of this agenda. I think that renewable energy is a multi-dimensional project that includes solar, wind, biogas and many other forms, but biomass may be the most important, because China still has 70% of its population in rural areas. It is a practical part of life for the rural population that they must cook three times a day, and the statistics show very clearly that each year around 20 million coal stoves are being sold. These stoves are extremely cheap – sometimes only 10 to 15 yuan a piece. And when people are finished with them they just throw them away and buy new ones. So I think our stoves can have a bright future and have a good market potential, but the difficulty and the challenge for me is that not too many people know about our stove and the importance of our invention – in China and the rest of the world. And that is why I would treasure the Ashden Award: so that farmers can learn about this opportunity and other developing countries can learn about this invention.

cd: Thank you very much – and good luck at the awards.

Sam Geall is the deputy editor of chinadialogue

Debate: what will you do for Live Earth?

Sam Geall — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:59:00 +0000

They might be one of the most ambitious media events of all time, but what will the Live Earth concerts really mean for the planet? The answer is down to you, says Sam Geall, launching a brand new debate on Cooler Living.

They are calling it one of the most ambitious global media events of all time: on July 7, the Live Earth concert organisers hope to attract 2 billion viewers on more than 120 television networks. If it works, nearly one-third of the world’s population will be watching a total of ten concerts on all seven continents. They will see acts that range from the iconic US rockstar Madonna, to Hong Kong’s favourite, Eason Chan and, from near the South Pole, Nunatak, an “indie rock-folk band” named after an arctic geological featureand made up of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station.

The mega-concert is planned as a rallying call for the planet to take global action on climate change. Yusef Robb, the concerts’ official spokesman, told chinadialogue: “You get a little bit of a taste, you take the first step – and the next thing you know you’re barrelling down the highway.”

Live Earth has been barrelling since the concerts were announced almost six months ago, with a growing line-up, more venues than initially planned and environmental groups from Alaska to Ankara planning parties to watch the concerts on TV.

So who could object to a global event to save the planet? Quite a few people do, and they ask some serious questions: are global celebrities who are notorious for their lavish personal lifestyles in any position to tell us to switch off the lights? They fly around on private jets, drive around in limousines and live in well heated mansions, so why should we believe them when they say they care about the environment?

Live Earth has thought about this: they say the concerts will live up to the “green event standard” and that sustainability engineers will reduce the carbon footprint of the events. But the questions go deeper: can you really raise awareness with a lavish global event that is itself a massive act of consumption, and when all the people who are leading it have a personal carbon footprint many times that of the average citizen, let alone the poorest?

According to an estimate commissioned by the BBC, Madonna emits more carbon each year than 100 average Britons – or more than 300 average Chinese. Add to that what the rock-stars’ fans emit travelling around to follow their idols (a US blogger picked up on one dedicated follower of antipodean soft-rockers Crowded House, who announced, without irony, that he is “travelling all the way around the world from Scotland to Sydney to see Crowded House.”)

Critics of Live Earth say there is another way: one group has organised Alive Earth, an online counter-concert. The musicians in Alive Earth say their online event will be a virtual, almost carbon-free alternative to the global spectacle.

Do we need Live Earth to raise awareness? There is certainly still confusion about climate change. A UK poll released on Tuesday shows that most adults in Britain still think that scientists are still in doubt about whether human activity is causing climate change. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), written and reviewed by over 1,000 scientists from more than 100 countries, has said with 90% certainty that human activity is to blame. So people do need to catch up, and quickly. But will going to a concert – or watching it on TV – be all that one-third of humanity does? Or will it be the beginning of a real change in the way people live?

Whether we get excited or infuriated by the concerts, they are only worth the time (and the carbon) if they make us more serious about personal commitments to combat climate change. Whether we make it to a concert on the day, watch it on TV or stay at home with the lights off, the important question is what we are prepared to change in our lives on Sunday morning:

Live Earth has a list: it’s a pledge that former US vice president Al Gore wants everybody to sign up to. Are you prepared to sign up, or are you just going to the party? Here it is – it’s up to you:

I PLEDGE:

1. To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2. To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

3. To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4. To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

5. To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6. To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

7. To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

If you don’t like this pledge, what would yours be?

Can you help build a Cooler Living pledge for young people around the world, whether they are rich or poor? Tell the world what your pledge is in the Cooler Living forum!

Sam Geall is the deputy editor of chinadialogue

Deepening the dialogue with China

Sam Geall — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:27:00 +0000

Phil Woolas is a minister of state for climate change, energy and sustainable development in the British government. Here, he talks to Sam Geall about his ongoing work with the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogues.

Sam Geall: It is a year since the first ministerial meeting of the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogues. Since then, how do you feel things have progressed?

Phil Woolas: Further than we thought; and probably further than we hoped, as well. We’re very pleased – the seriousness with which the Chinese government and its agencies and the UK are taking this issue is much greater than people realise. I would say it is the most developed dialogue we’ve got.

SG: chinadialogue is one of the projects that have been supported by the Dialogues. What are some of the other projects they have enabled?

PW: There are mutually beneficial projects in the area of forestry, for instance. Although the scale of forestry in China is huge, in the UK we have 90 years of so of experience in afforestation. Our reputation in the world of forestry is very high, and this collaboration on forestry is beneficial for other countries as well.

There is also a general increase in collaboration at a research-and-development, academic level, and there are other parts of the relationship outside the formal dialogue – on energy, for instance, in the UK-China task force, of which I am a member. It is deepening and broadening, so it’s very exciting.

SG: You have pointed to some areas where China can learn from the UK on climate change. But if we are really going to urge a sustainable model of growth in China – or anywhere in the developing world – don’t we need to show a serious intent to reduce our levels of consumption?

PW: We do, but what I think was really the most encouraging point that came out of meeting Du Ying [vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission] was that the goal of their policy is the same as ours, which is to decouple economic growth from emissions. I found China’s view on this progressive, and well ahead of many countries in the world. The UK’s economy has grown by 27% in the last 10 years, but our emissions have reduced by 7%. That shows the world – and ourselves – that you can have green economic growth. In terms of the debate about the future of our planet and our environment, most commentators – and indeed most agitators – make the assumption that you can only have economic growth at the cost of the environment, or you can only have environmental sustainability at the cost of economic prosperity. What China and the UK are showing is that you can have both – and that is of profound importance.

SG: But isn’t the UK government lagging behind other British institutions in this? A Sustainable Development Commission report in March showed that government departments are using more water and more carbon, and that they are less energy efficient than they were in 1999.

PW: The UK government – as an institution – has lots of catching up to do. It is a flotilla, not a battleship, and each ship has to improve. We see ourselves as a flagship at Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs], and we aim to improve the situation.

SG: One of our readers, commenting in Chinese on chinadialogue.net, responded to a report [first published in the Guardian newspaper] that says the UK is only on track to have 5% of its energy coming from renewables by 2020, a fraction of the 20% by 2020 EU target. He said: "On one hand, [the British government] are… urging China to start cutting emissions… on the other hand, they are acting slowly themselves, or even thinking of ways to eat their words" How would you respond to his comment?

On the specifics of the Guardian article, I would refute the claim the authors made, which I thought was a misinterpretation of what was being said.

However, on the substantive point, the reader is right to say that on current trends, the UK will miss our target on renewables. On Kyoto – on the bigger picture – we will meet our target and we are very pleased with that. But let me say: we are not trying to tell the Chinese people what to do. The Chinese government – in my experience of international dialogue – is part of the solution, not part of the problem. They are well in advance of most countries in recognising the depth and breadth of the problem, and we are already seeing that they are taking substantial action at home. We are not trying to tell the Chinese people that we have got it right and they have got it wrong. For instance, in our objectives for Bali [see below], we are calling for binding agreements from the developed countries; we don’t make that request of China.

Regarding renewables, we do need to have a step change. We think that the Severn Estuary barrier, which would generate tidal power, will help – though perhaps not in the timescale that is required of us. We also think that anaerobic digestion for power will help enormously, and we will see an exponential rise in the use of combined heat and power. We do not include nuclear power in the renewables target, but our energy policy is looking to see how nuclear power can contribute to reducing our emissions. You will have to come back in 2020 – we are determined not to be embarrassed on the international stage, and we will address the issue.

SG: You have mentioned the UNFCCC meeting in Bali in December, when world leaders will meet to discuss an agreement on climate change for the period after the first set of Kyoto Protocol commitments expires in 2012. Why do you feel that China – or other large developing countries – should not have to face binding targets?

PW: We think there is a question of the historical legacy: the UK was emitting greenhouse gases 150 to 200 years ago, before the industrialisation of India, China or other developing countries. We also recognise that they have the right to sustainable economic growth and development, and we believe that a major way in tackling the problem is to have a robust emissions trading market, and for that to work you need the richest countries to participate. Moreover, I think that there is a patronising assumption in some policies – and I would say this of policies put forward by the Conservative Party in the UK – that the developing world should have old technologies and that the developed world should have new technologies. The world doesn’t work like that. The technologies that we are developing – clean coal, for example – will apply in the developing world just as much as the developed world. If we can get that binding target agreed in the developed world, we will change the direction of energy policy and industrial-processing policy in the developing world also, through technology transfer, through markets that we are creating and through trade. It will be particularly true in China, given the size and the importance of its economy.

SG: You would say, then, that China can become an incubator for climate-friendly technologies?

PW: It’s already happening. I’m very excited, as a member of the China-UK task force, about the eco-city project in Dongtan. In the UK, our new prime minister has now launched a programme to build eco-towns. China is already doing it.

SG: But still, when I tell people in China that I work on climate-change issues, some will actually respond: "Climate change? Emissions cuts are a method that rich countries want to use to stop China from succeeding." How would you respond to this?

PW: I can respond to this directly by saying that the economic success of China has helped the development of the United Kingdom. We are major traders with each other. Our policy is that the prosperity of China increases our own prosperity and opportunities. Our secondary schools now teach Mandarin Chinese – and Cantonese in some cases. All of our nine major cities have China relationships at a business and commerce level. We don’t base our policy on maintaining a competitive advantage in markets by keeping other countries down. Our experience in the European Union has been that the prosperity of our partners encourages our own prosperity: Ireland has been the best example of that, I think, in the world.

SG: What do you see coming out of the future of the Sustainable Development Dialogues?

PW: We have agreed to extend the dialogue – and it has been judged to be a success, but our co-operation needs to be deeper, and we need clear, agreed timetables for the future.

Phil Woolas is the minister of state for climate change, energy and sustainable development in the British government

Sam Geall is deputy editor of chinadialogue

Film review: Up the Yangtze

Sam Geall — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:14:00 +0000

A moving cinematic tale of life on Asia’s longest river raises questions about ecology, development and China’s future, says Sam Geall.

Yung Chang was 24 when he first saw the Yangtze River. It was 2002 and Chang, who grew up in Canada, had agreed to accompany his grandfather on a “farewell cruise” through China's Three Gorges before the area is flooded by the world's biggest dam project. The experience laid the foundations for Chang's film Up the Yangtze, which was screened in London in March 2008 as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival.

I ask Chang when he decided to make the film. “As we approached the waiting cruise ship,” he says, “there was this marching band, and the marching band played 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' – and that moment I decided to make this film.”

Chang persuaded the tour company to let him shoot a documentary on their ship, describing it as “a sort-of Gosford Park film.” It seems an unusual analogy at first. The country house in Robert Altman's 2001 murder mystery straddles floors and social classes, while Up the Yangtze spans Asia’s largest river and puts one of the world's most controversial engineering projects at its heart. However, the comparison is not so far off. In his careful attention to the economic dimensions of the tourist cruise down the Yangtze – and the social implications of the mega-dam project – Chang says he tried to show the viewer the “human face behind that dam”.

The principal human faces of the film are Yu Shui and Chen Boyu, two young workers on the cruise ship. Yu,16, dreams of becoming a scientist. She is the daughter of poor farmers and grew up in an illegal settlement on the banks of the Yangtze River in Fengdu, Sichuan province. Chen is an urbane 19-year-old from a wealthier background than Yu. Both teenagers reflect important aspects of the country's youth, but with his confidence and short attention span, Chen better embodies China’s single-child “little emperor” generation. We see his struggles with the ship management and his love of karaoke. Yu, meanwhile, learns how to be a woman and a consumer in fast-developing China.

Progress, change and development are at the heart of the film, not least in the lives of its two teenage protagonists. At one point in the film, Chang's voiceover quotes Mao Zedong’s famous 1956 poem about the dam project, which was then just a dream, but now has displaced nearly two million people:

“The mountain goddess, if she is still there;

Will marvel at a world so changed.”

This changing world is the film’s only constant. Chang first visited the country in 1997 “with some idea of a more preserved culture.” He now regards his nostalgia as naïve. Chang was awed by Chongqing, the world’s largest municipality and home to more than 30 million people. “It was like a scene out of the movie Blade Runner, arriving in this city lit up in neon lights,” he says. “It’s certainly a country that’s always moving forward. The sense of preservation is something that doesn’t exist.”

Photo credit: Yung Chang

Chang, however, describes the march of progress with a hint of sadness. Over the four years he researched and shot Up the Yangtze, the filmmaker accompanied countless near-identical trips up and down the disappearing gorges, but as memories of the river were drowned beneath the rising waters, the only thing that altered was the language. “It's the same boat,” he says. “The only thing that changes is the language of how people describe things: there was a change in the tense that was used [to describe the river]. For me, it was almost like being in some kind of time-warp.”

If Up the Yangtze is a film about progress, it is also about sacrifice. The ship's workers and local residents often reflect on the choice between the “little family” -- their loved ones and livelihoods displaced by the dam project -- and the “big family” -- the nation and its economic development. It is a difficult choice at the heart of the film.

In September 2007, Chinese officials admitted for the first time that the dam had caused myriad ecological problems in the region. The People’s Daily reported that these included “more frequent landslides and pollution”. If preventive measures were not taken, said the newspaper, “there could be an environmental ‘catastrophe’”. Does Chang agree with this assessment? “I know there are a handful of benefits,” says Chang. After witnessing the project, however, he found “the negative effects well outweigh the benefits in terms of social and environmental impact.”

The filmmaker met fishermen whose stocks had dwindled due to pollution in the river. He also saw deeply unhappy residents protesting corrupt local officials who had mishandled the resettlement programmes for people displaced by the dam. The film is not simply reportage, however, Chang says he set out to capture something “dramatic and cinematic”. “It’s really about finding the human emotions, and by extension triggering the discussion about the environment and social issues.”

Chang's training in Meisner technique, a method of acting, may be one of the ways he managed to capture such raw, intimate exchanges between its protagonists. The documentary is cinéma verité at its best: striking and moving, not only in its vivid depiction of environmental and social issues, but also its keen eye for Chinese family lives. Up the Yangtze is showing at film festivals around the world and has impressed prominent Chinese environmentalists, some of them critics of the dam for 20 years or more.

But what effect did the film have on its subjects? Chang, who became part of Yu Shui's “extended family” during the filming, said Yu was deeply affected by the documentary. “She told me that through watching the film, she was able to see her fate and her destiny. In fact, she decided to leave the boat to go back to high school.”

But what lies in Yu Shui's future? Chang says he doesn't know. And the same, of course, is true of the Three Gorges. We cannot know what lies in its future, but one thing is for sure: this important story of progress and sacrifice is not over yet.

Sam Geall is deputy editor of chinadialogue

The new landscape of our time

Sam Geall — Fri, 09 May 2008 06:20:00 +0000

Manufactured Landscapes, an art film that brings to life Edward Burtynsky’s still photographs of China, exposes the strange intimacies of a globalised world in crisis, says Sam Geall.

The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose large, majestic prints focus on human construction and industrial landscapes, says he aims “not to glorify industry, nor to damn it.” But when he turned his lens to China's rapid industrialisation, what did he find? And how can his striking images help us understand the environmental challenges facing the world's fastest growing economy? These questions are asked subtly and artfully in Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary film directed by Jennifer Baichwal, which opened in the United Kingdom on May 9.

I meet Baichwal at the British Film Institute in London and start by asking her why she was first attracted to Burtynsky's vast images of factory production lines, ship-breaking yards and mountains of electronic waste. “When I first saw Burtynsky's work,” she says, “I was struck by the capacity of the pieces to change environmental consciousness non-didactically.” Baichwal, whose previous films include a portrait of the enigmatic writer Paul Bowles, says she was drawn to the images' ambiguity and sense of mystery. “They are beautiful to look at, but you're looking at garbage. The somersaults that your mind goes through when you're confronting one of these prints – I think it takes you to a different place.”

This complexity stands in sharp contrast to the green politics of an earlier time, she says, politics which were often polarising and out of touch with the ethical imaginations of ordinary city dwellers. “Not everybody's going to move to the country and become an organic farmer and make their own clothes.” Instead, Manufactured Landscapes suggests another way to begin to think about ecology. Rather than being a documentary with a didactic political message – in the style of Al Gore's global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth – the film’s stately pace allows the viewer to “slow down enough to meditate on your own impact on the environment.”

Baichwal admits that Manufactured Landscapes reaches similar conclusions to Gore's film, “but through a completely different path that is much more experiential, allowing you to be in the places you are responsible for, but would never see.” The film animates these hidden places in Burtynsky's work with on-the-ground reportage, the photographer's own words and a dissonant, industrial soundscape. At its heart is the seeming contradiction between the rapid, noisy process of industrialisation in Asia and the eerie serenity of Burtynsky’s monumental photographs.

Burtynsky was inspired to shoot in China, Baichwal tells me, when he started to wonder where his computer would go to die once he had finished using it. Searching for the answer led him to China’s vast recycling yards for waste electronic equipment, where the United States sends at least half of its “e-waste”, and where substances like lead and cadmium often pose environmental and health risks to workers and local residents. His bold photographs of junked computers and televisions, therefore, aim to make the viewer aware of the consequences of his or her own consumption. “There is no 'away' to throw garbage away to,” Baichwal says, quoting the sustainability-focused American architect William McDonough. “The whole film is meant for you to reflect back on yourself. It's about all of us; it's not about people in China.”

However, the film is mostly shot in China and its subjects range from workers in the country’s booming manufacturing-for-export sector to construction at the Three Gorges Dam project, from coal mining to urban nightclubs for the country’s new middle classes. As different as these sites may seem, landscape is the film's organising principle and – as the title suggests – this is exclusively of the man-made variety. During the film, Burtynsky is heard to reflect: “The new landscape of our time is the landscape that we change, that we disrupt in the name of progress.” And Baichwal tells me, too, that she was struck by these places' unique effect. “Being in some of those landscapes, you literally can do a 360-degree turn and there is nothing natural left in the environment – nothing.”

But in concentrating on the changing landscape of China’s rapid development, does the film single out the country for criticism? “They are doing what every other industrialised country has done: industrialise; make a lot of money; get incredibly dirty; clean up later,” says Baichwal. Many in the country understand the consequences of this growth, she adds, and are working to change the way it is handled. “People in China know the cause, they know what's going on, but I think there is this constant tension between being outspoken and advocating for change, and not going too far so that you become marginalised.”

“I never wanted anyone to think this was an indictment of China, because it's not,” she continues. “This is really more about thinking about yourself and your own participation in cycles of consumption.” The film takes you to sites of frenetic transformation and environmental degradation not to excuse your own inaction, but to inspire a personal transformation. “Once you witness a place that you are responsible for but would never normally see, it changes you,” says Baichwal. And this ties you intimately to lives on the other side of the world. “I'm heartened by the fact that most audiences… look at themselves and think about their own intimate relationship to that woman [in China] who spends her life making spray mechanisms for irons.”

It is the strange intimacy of an increasingly globalised world facing a shared, looming crisis that underpins the environmental consciousness of Manufactured Landscapes. “We all have to recognise that there is no ‘far away’ anymore,” says Baichwal.

Manufactured Landscapes is released in the United Kingdom on May 9. For more information and venues, visit www.bfi.org.uk/manufactured

Sam Geall is the deputy editor of chinadialogue

Debate: what would you tell the G8?

Sam Geall — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:58:00 +0000

As world leaders meet in Japan, scientists, business leaders and campaign groups are calling on governments to urgently address climate change. What practical measures would you ask the major economies to take? Sam Geall begins the debate.

All eyes are on Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido, this week as leaders from the world’s major industrialised countries take part in a summit at which climate change will be high on the agenda.

Meeting in Germany last year, the Group of Eight (G8) leaders – from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – agreed to “seriously consider” a goal of halving global greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. They also committed to negotiate a new international deal on slowing climate change beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

With these agreements in mind, the United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon urged the G8 leaders last week to address the “triple crisis” of climate change, poverty and rising food prices at the meeting. But will they hear his call? And will the G8 listen to the appeals of scientists, business leaders and environmentalists?

Green groups say the world’s leading economies are lagging in their progress on climate change. None are on target to reduce their emissions enough to avoid an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change, a recent report from WWF and financial services company Allianz warned. Even the United Kingdom – the G8 country the report ranked first for its progress on climate change – was criticised for its very small share of renewable energy and unambitious targets on emissions reduction.

So, what can the leading economies do to address an increasingly urgent global threat? Last week almost 100 heads of major companies released a set of suggestions. In the CEO Climate Policy Recommendations to G8 Leaders a group of business leaders call for a new global deal built on the foundations of the Kyoto Protocol. They urge a pragmatic and market-oriented approach based on clear international commitments and sectoral agreements. Rich countries will have to take the lead and demonstrate strong cuts in emissions, they say, proposing a policy framework that includes a renewed emphasis on adaptation and technology transfer to developing countries.

The CEOs say:

A market for carbon is necessary but not sufficient to promote the rapid development, demonstration and wide deployment of clean technologies. While emissions and other mitigation commitments will help draw low-carbon technologies into the marketplace, other policy measures are also needed to stimulate markets, to ensure broader deployment of and equitable access to best available clean energy and GHG [greenhouse-gas] mitigation technologies, and to promote the development, deployment of new and close-to-market clean energy and GHG mitigation technologies. Such measures include:

• Government procurement targets for clean technology, services and products

• Rolling performance standards for services and products that can work with other policy measures to promote the turnover of old technologies

• Removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers

• Development of incentives to encourage wider uptake of clean energy technologies such as purchase power agreements, mandatory targets, removal of import duties, development of common standards and green certificates

• International agreements to protect the rights of technology owners, in order to sustain and broaden investments in clean technology innovation

• Support for international multi-industry and multi-research centre initiatives to undertake shared investigations into the new knowledge and breakthrough technologies we still need

• Stronger public-private coordination and funding to help potentially transformational technologies to market, including partnerships for large-scale demonstration projects

It is not only business leaders who have appealed to the G8. A recent joint statement from scientists in the G8 countries and five leading emerging economies – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa – presented world leaders with a list of recommendations. One key suggestion from the group of major scientific academies, which included the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society in the UK, was the development and deployment of technology to bury greenhouse-gas emissions from coal burning power plants.

They write:

The development of a low carbon society means not merely the replacement of energy sources with less carbon intensive ones, but energy conservation as well. Sustainable consumption requires fundamental changes in all sectors and levels of society, including energy-saving housing, low-carbon transportation and more efficient industrial processes.

[...]

The transition to a low carbon society requires: setting standards; designing economic instruments and promoting energy efficiency across all sectors; encouraging changes in individual behaviour; strengthening technology transfer to enable leapfrogging to cleaner and more efficient technologies; and investing strongly in carbon-removing technologies and low-carbon energy resources: nuclear power, solar energy, hydroelectricity and other renewable energy sources.

[...]

Technologies should be developed and deployed for carbon capture, storage and sequestration (CCS), particularly for emissions from coal which will continue to be a primary energy source for the next 50 years for power and other industrial processes. G8+5 economies can take the lead globally to further develop CCS technologies. This will involve governments and industry working collaboratively to develop the financial and regulatory conditions needed to move CCS forward and international coordination in the development of demonstration plants.

Given the time-lags inherent in the global energy system, actions need to be taken now to reach the desired target by 2050. Whilst the developed world should take the lead and encourage technology transfer and collaboration with developing world partners, it is also an issue where the developing and emerging economies can and must make a significant contribution.

Environmentalists will no doubt agree that a low-carbon development path must be found. But not everyone will concur with the scientists’ proposed solutions. Take CCS, for example. It is still a largely untested technology and could prove a risky wager. So far, it appears to be prohibitively energy-intensive, and some campaigners even call it a dangerous distraction, instead favouring advances in renewable sources and greater energy efficiency.

On chinadialogue we’re asking: what would you say to the G8 leaders? What recommendations would you make to reduce the impacts and the extent of global warming? Which suggestions would you keep – and which would go straight in the bin? Leave your comments and suggestions on the forum.

Sam Geall is deputy editor of chinadialogue

Homepage photo by Richard Brand

“We need a second Green Revolution”

Sam Geall — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Steven Chu is a Nobel prize-winning physicist and the US secretary of energy. Here, he tells Sam Geall about energy futures and priorities for policymakers.

Sam Geall, chinadialogue’s deputy editor, interviewed Steven Chu before his government appointment. They discussed China’s energy future and the responsibilities of policymakers faced with a warming world. Edited excerpts are published below.

Sam Geall: Can countries decouple energy use and emissions without exporting manufacturing?

Steven Chu: In the United States, we offshore some energy intensive industries – plastics, for example. Steel and concrete is slightly offshored, but not as much as you would think, because China is consuming most of its own steel and concrete. We have offshored to some extent, but not completely.

Commercial and residential buildings account for 40% of our energy. Transportation – trains, trucks, air, personal and all the others – is 28%; industry is the last. I believe we can drop down by a factor of four or five in buildings. China’s energy use is 65% buildings, so if they drop down by a similar factor and become really efficient, we can decouple.

There are some industries: steel, cement, aluminum that are very energy intensive. But already in the United States the cement industry has dropped down by about 30% in energy. It’s the same with the chemical industry, again about 25% to 30%. But can they make it all the way to zero? Absolutely not.

SG: What should policymakers’ priorities be, when it comes to climate change?

SC: The Stern report says there’s a 50% chance that in this century we will go up by five degrees Celsius. The potential downsides of that – and the economic costs – are so enormous that it is prudent insurance to try not to go near it. Try to go one or two degrees Celsius: I think one degree is already written.

People don’t realise six degrees Celsius is the difference between today and the Ice Ages. During the Ice Ages, in what is now the United States, Ohio and Pennsylvania were covered in permanent ice all year round. This is a big change. So five degrees the other way is also a big change.

Borders of countries that took thousands of years to develop – what do you do with these? Some places will be uninhabitable. There’s a big fear that the agriculture around the equator will collapse. Rich people will always survive, but there will be millions of poor people that could die.

SG: An energy and climate-change crisis could also cause great conflict.

SC: Sea level goes up. If the northern tundra melts you get this great release of carbon. Greenland will melt, part of Antarctica will melt. In Bangladesh, with 140 million people, half of them could be permanently displaced. Where are they going to go? To India? What’s India going to do? The economic, social and political consequences are huge.

SG: What do we do about coal, which China and the United States are still dependent on?

SC: We have got to figure out how to use coal in a clean way, which means we have got to figure out how to capture the carbon dioxide. The methods are too expensive. I think we can store it quite safely, but it has to be proven, because the public is going to be very wary. The public doesn’t like windmills, some people don’t like hydro-electric dams, and they certainly don’t like nuclear. The danger of carbon dioxide release, in my mind, is actually greater for life than nuclear. And you would need to have thousands of repositories. So unless you can really demonstrate that they are safe, there is going to be lawsuit after lawsuit and things would be stalled for years. You have got to do research and prove to the public that it is going to be safe. You have got to do research on how to capture it better.

I think investment in carbon sequestration is absolutely needed. I think high temperature metallurgy is needed for more efficient power plants. Right now the most efficient coal burning plants are 40% to 42% efficient. They can go over 50%. And the coal plant efficiency in China is about 30%, and in India it’s even less than 30%. So you can almost double it: that’s a lot.

SG: What would you tell China’s policymakers?

SC: The major issue in China is energy efficiency. They have reasonable mileage standards, but not as good as Europe. They are beginning to close down their very inefficient industries and coal plants. They are trying to do these things more aggressively, so that’s good news.

I think the United States can do the carbon sequestration research. A lot of the research is not intellectual property. It’s just a question of: “we now know how to do it, and they can do it too”. What happens geochemically is something we need to find out, but China can just read the journals. And then perhaps we can co-develop other technologies.

SG: What do you think about biofuels?

SC: Let me just say there’s 101 ways to do it wrong, and a couple of ways to do it right. I am certainly not in favour of foreign ethanol. You want to get off corn as quickly as possible. I’m not in favor of chopping down Indonesian rainforest to grow palm oil. That’s a bigger loser for the climate than leaving the rainforest there.

SG: You have said we need a second Green Revolution.

SC: I think there needs to be a second Green Revolution, because we are not doing agriculture in a sustainable way. We are over-fertilising. There’s a huge greenhouse-gas problem. There’s a water pollution problem. It’s time to have a really hard look at our agricultural practices.

SG: How do we achieve this?

SC: Partly education, partly incentives, partly regulation. A lot of over-fertilising, at least in the United States, comes from ignorance and pushy salesmen. “If this much fertiliser is good, then twice as much is better.” Well, it is better, but maybe only 10% better. And the farmer doesn’t pay for the water pollution problems, and the nitrate runoffs, and all the nitrous oxide that is being generated.

SG: What do you think is at stake at Copenhagen?

SC: The future of the world. Not to sound too melodramatic. I’m very much hoping the United States and the new administration will begin to play a leadership role. If the United States plays a leadership role, I think China and India will follow, because they will suffer more from climate change than we will – and they know that. But I agree that they can’t do it unless the United States does it first. So if the United States takes a leadership role and is willing to develop and share technology, it would go a long way.

China already is very afraid. They’re beginning to see the consequences of climate change in their water supplies. In northern China, the Yellow River is beginning to run dry; the Tibetan plateau is melting very quickly. They have forest degradation as well. All over the world we’re beginning to see this. And once you lose your forest you lose your watershed area. Trees do something magical to the land, they help hold the water.

SG: What are the key issues that need to be a part of the decision at Copenhagen?

SC: The international price of carbon: we need a way of regulating it so that you make sure there’s a floor. You don’t want the price to crash. There must be ways of limiting it, just as in the US economy there’s a Federal Reserve board that tries to balance things by adjusting interest rates. You could adjust things through how many carbon credits you auction, or a minimum floor for the auction. It’s important for long-term investment.

We need regulation where the price won’t do it. The price will never make a house with insulation more attractive. There should be inducements – carrot and stick. I think countries have the wisdom to put more research into energy. Denmark understands: they look at industries like their wind power industry and their enzyme industry [for biofuel production] and they are making lots of money. They see this as a business opportunity.

SG: And a company may hit on something that’s truly transformative.

SC: Yes, and they are going to make a lot of money.

I really hope we can get photovoltaics to work better. There is nothing in the laws of physics that say they cannot be really cheap and 25% efficient. Because of that I think there is more technological headroom in photovoltaics. But it may not work for 10 or 20 years.

Building efficiency could be comparable. One problem is that the people who are supposed to be operating buildings don’t know how to. I have seen this in my own laboratory: it was a new building, the people didn’t know how to adjust the heating ventilation system and it would oscillate. It was fighting itself – too hot and too cold – and it went on for two months. Finally someone gave us control of it. They just didn’t know how to operate the building. So you have to make the buildings smart. That I think has a lot of potential. Is it transformative? The results might be.

Sam Geall is deputy editor of chinadialogue

Steven Chu is currently the 12th United States secretary of energy. Chu won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light.

Homepage photo by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory