Travel Series - Bill Gates "UnConfuse Me" Series

Bill's YouTube Channel

The message I’m taking to COP28

Bill Gates  |  2.37 min

Nov 27, 2023

I’ll be talking about progress on climate and what we

need to do next. Learn more at https://gatesnot.es/47ztcoi

Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates

My latest podcast is all about learning something new

article link

What do you do when you can’t solve a problem? I like to talk to smart people who can help me understand the subject better. I call this process “getting unconfused”—and I think it is one of the best ways to learn something new. In my new podcast, I try to get unconfused about some of the things that fascinate me. Join me on my learning journey as I talk to brilliant guests about Alzheimer’s, artificial intelligence, the future of education, plant-based meat, the evolution of language, marijuana, and more.

Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates - Episode 5

Yejin Choi  |  31.50 min

11/16/2023 6:00:00 PM

Few people are better at explaining the science of artificial intelligence than Yejin Choi. She’s a computer science professor at the University of Washington, senior research director at the Allen Institute for AI, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. I thought her recentTED talk

was terrific, and I was thrilled to talk to her about how you train a large language model, why it’s so hard for robots to pick tools out of a box, and why universities must play a key role in the future of AI research.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on YouTube

Episode transcript

Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates - Episode 4

John McWhorter  |  30.22 mim

9/7/2023 7:00:00 AM

I recently started learning French, and the process has made one thing clear to me: There’s a lot I don’t understand about how languages work. So, I turned to John McWhorter, a linguist who has dedicated his career to demystifying the roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the world. When he isn’t busywriting books

John is a professor at Columbia University, host of his ownpodcast, and frequent lecturer forGreat Courses. He helped me understand why English is so irregular, what the ideal language would look like, why all dialects are created equal, and more.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on YouTube

Episode transcript

Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates - Episode 3

Questlove  |  31.36 min

8/24/2023 7:00:00 AM

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is the ultimate multi-hyphenate: He’s a musician, filmmaker, author, entrepreneur, and more. The Grammy and Oscar winner is also a plant-based foods advocate, so when I had some questions about the future of food, I knew I had to sit down with him. We had a blast talking about why he made ameatless Philly cheesesteak, how we make healthy food accessible to more people, Questlove’s insane record collection, how we got our nicknames, and our Wordle strategies.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on YouTube

Episode transcript

Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates - Episode 2

Sal Khan  | 30.29 min

8/10/2023 7:00:00 AM

Sal Khan is a true pioneer of harnessing the power of technology to help kids learn. So, when I wanted to learn more about how artificial intelligence will transform education, I knew I had to talk to the founder ofKhan Academy. I loved chatting with Sal about why tutoring is so important, how his new serviceKhanmigo is making the most of ChatGPT, and how we can keep teachers at the center of the classroom in the age of AI. We even found time to talk about our favorite teachers and the subject we wish we’d studied in school.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on YouTube

Episode transcript

Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates - Episode 1

Seth Rogen & Lauren Miller Rogen  |  35.24 min

7/27/2023 7:00:00 AM

Can Alzheimer’s disease be funny? I was skeptical, especially given the devastating experience my family had watching my dad suffer from it. So, I asked two experts in using humor to raise awareness—Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen—to help me see the light. We had a great conversation about their organization Hilarity for Charity,hope for the future of Alzheimer’s research, theimportance of a good night’s sleep, and why Seth started acannabis lifestyle company

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on YouTube

Episode transcript

Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions

I teamed up with actress and writer Rashida Jones to create a podcast that tackles some of the biggest questions facing us today: Is it too late to solve climate change? Does everybody lie? Is inequality inevitable? You can listen to each episode below and even access exclusive bonus content by becoming a Gates Notes Insider.

Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions - Episode 5

Can people really change?

12/14/2020 12:00:00 AM  |  51.13 min

2020 has been a year of change. From the presidential election to the pandemic, it’s clear that the world will never be the same after this year—and neither will all of us who experienced it. In the season finale, Bill and Rashida explore how progress hinges on society’s ability to evolve, how our view of the world shifts as we get older, and whether it’s actually possible to change someone’s mind. Then they’re joined by two people who are using their positions as artists to change the world for the better: Bono and Kerry Washington.

Read full article

Episode transcript

Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions - Episode 4

Is it too late to stop climate change?

12/7/2020 12:00:00 AM  |  50.45 min

Climate change is the most daunting challenge of our time. Tackling it will require unprecedented amounts of innovation, investment, and global cooperation. Are we actually making progress yet? Can we really stop the worst effects of climate change? In this week’s episode, Bill and Rashida take on perhaps their biggest question yet with an assist from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert.

Read full article

Episode transcript

Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions - Episode 3

Why do we believe lies?

11/30/2020 12:00:00 AM  |  45.56 min

Honesty is a core value in most cultures. But humanity has always been obsessed with untruths, from little white lies to vast conspiracy theories. Bill and Rashida are joined by "Sapiens"> author and historian Yuval Noah Harari to talk about why we’re so willing to believe falsehoods and what these lies tell us about ourselves—both as individuals and as a society.

Read full article

Episode transcript

Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions - Episode 2

Is inequality inevitable?

11/23/2020 12:00:00 AM  |  45.75 min

2020 has brought to light a lot of issues, including growing inequality in the United States. We're seeing huge gaps in income, access to healthcare, and quality of education across the country. Economist Raj Chetty joins the podcast to talk about his groundbreaking research on opportunity in America. Then Mayor Aja Brown joins the conversation to talk about how she is leveling the playing field in Compton.

Read full article

Episode transcript

Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions - Episode 1

What will the world look like after COVID-19?

11/16/2020 12:00:00 AM  |  44.02 min

Ever since the pandemic started, we’ve heard the same refrain: we need to get back to normal. But what does “normal” even mean after such a history-changing event? Bill and Rashida discuss how COVID-19 will forever change our workplaces, our schools, and even our social lives. They also get real with NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci about what we can expect in the months ahead.

Read full article

Episode transcript

Four Processual Shorts on the Subject of ESG

 

[February 17, 2011] "Hanging out with the boys at the Bob." All were pro-amateur skateboarders. Over the past twelve years since this photo was taken, one became a loving and endearing missionary to the Thai people; one an accomplished artist in tiling, mosaics, painting, and leather work; and the last, my most special relationship, became my son-in-law and husband to my daughter, and father to my grandson. He took his passion for music and skateboarding and turned it into an industry for the Gen-YZ's of the world and then to everyone everywhere when building accessible, three-wheel recombinant trikes for recreational fun, the infirmed, the aged, and health. - res

Eco-Civ Short #1/4

Building ecological societies one ESG element at a time. Integrating nature, people, and ethical policies of sustainability, green and blue infrastructures, technologies, and global interaction together in improving streams of biotic value, functional generation and societal equality.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

Eco-Civ Short #2/4

I speak to building processual "ecological societies" all the time. ESG is an approximation of this idea at this time... it brings a mixture of community-first eco-business with a high degree of competition utilizing biotic sustainability modeling in its business ethics. Which is why I include the Forbes, Fortune, and WSJ articles to FB every now and then re ESG along with my own articles on building process-relational societies (as versus "biblical" kingdom communities of oppression and domination).

Businesses will not be moving backwards into past non-ESG paradigms because ESG is much more than sustainability models now including green and blue community-based infrastructures, tech business integration, and community standards of equality.

Those businesses which cannot change their commercial and industrial modelling plans re environmental, societal and local policy impact, make for poorer investment models for investors wishing improvement across a wide scale of relief.

Hence, when businesses are being overlooked in outside funding it is because their older business models are not implementing themselves as environmental caretakers, employer-employee caretakers, or local societal policies of community caretake.

Such business models are no longer competitive and will show a poorer return on funds compared to those business competitors which have worked ESG into their programs for the good of the environment, society, and dealings with one another.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

Eco-Civ Short #3/4

Purposely misunderstanding ESG is no defense for taking right actions towards the environment, people, and ethics in government.

• EEEE - Refusing to stop polluting and toxifying biotic and human communities shows willful disregard to the welfare of a highly integrated community.

• SSSS - Refusing to consider employment conditions and welfare of your workers again promotes money over value.

• GGGG - And allowing corruption, lies, and false dealing between elected representatives and the public means removal from office (hopefully immediately re criminal prosecutiins). 

In sum, THIS IS WHAT ESG MEANS... my word for ESG remains the same, socially responsible "ecological societies, communities, and global civilizations".  We live in processual worlds where processual caretake must be a part of our investment into one another and the world at large.

EXCERPT from Wikipedia

1. EEEEnvironmental aspect: Data is reported on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, energy efficiency and water management.
2. SSSSocial aspect: Data is reported on employee safety and health, working conditions, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and conflicts and humanitarian crises, and is relevant in risk and return assessments directly through results in enhancing (or destroying) customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
3. GGGGovernance aspect: Data is reported on corporate governance such as preventing bribery, corruption, Diversity of Board of Directors, executive compensation, cybersecurity and privacy practices, and management structure.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

Environmental, social, and corporate governance

• 
  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is a framework designed to be embedded into an organization's strategy that considers the needs and ways in which to generate value for all of organizational stakeholders (such as employees, customers and suppliers and financiers).

ESG corporate reporting can be used by stakeholders to assess the material sustainability-related risks and opportunities relevant to an organization. Investors may also use ESG data beyond assessing material risks to the organization in their evaluation of enterprise value, specifically by designing models based on assumptions that the identification, assessment and management of sustainability-related risks and opportunities in respect to all organizational stakeholders leads to higher long-term risk-adjusted return.^[1] Organizational stakeholders include but not limited to customers, suppliers, employees, leadership, and the environment.^[2]

Since 2020, there has been accelerating pressure from the United Nations to overlay ESG data with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), based on their work, which began in the 1980s.^[3]

The term ESG was popularly used first in a 2004 report titled "Who Cares Wins", which was a joint initiative of financial institutions at the invitation of UN.^[4] In less than 20 years, the ESG movement has grown from a corporate social responsibility initiative launched by the United Nations into a global phenomenon representing more than US$30 trillion in assets under management.^[5] In the year 2019 alone, capital totaling US$17.67 billion flowed into ESG-linked products, an almost 525 percent increase from 2015, according to Morningstar, Inc.^[6] Critics claim ESG linked-products have not had and are unlikely to have the intended impact of raising the cost of capital for polluting firms,^[7] and have accused the movement of greenwashing.^[8]

Dimensions

1. Environmental aspect: Data is reported on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, energy efficiency and water management.
2. Social aspect: Data is reported on employee safety and health, working conditions, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and conflicts and humanitarian crises,^[9] and is relevant in risk and return assessments directly through results in enhancing (or destroying) customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
3. Governance aspect: Data is reported on corporate governance such as preventing bribery, corruption, Diversity of Board of Directors, executive compensation, cybersecurity and privacy practices, and management structure.

* * * * * *

Eco-Civ Short #4/4

Ideological politics aside American business is committed to ESG as is global business. The wording, like CRT, is purposely misunderstood by MAGA-heads... but then again ideology serves no man or woman except those looking to gain power rather than doing right.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

EXCERPT

"Taking care of the communities you operate in helps ensure those communities will allow you to operate in the future. Recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce is essential to acquiring the best talent in a labor-constrained world. And focusing on how your company can meaningfully contribute to the climate transition is a way to create value in a business world that is clearly committed to that transition. In short, companies need to do a better job making it clear this is not about politics; it’s about good, long-term business."

Alan Murray, Editor of Fortune Magazine

Memo Link

Good morning.

Do deficits matter?

I have spent much of my career in the vicinity of that question, having covered U.S. fiscal policy as a cub reporter in the 1980s. That’s when supply-side Republicans dropped their concerns about deficits to push tax cuts as a counter to Democrats who had already abandoned deficit concerns to push spending increases. A stalwart but steadily shrinking group of people continued to beat the deficit drum, arguing deficit spending would “crowd out” private investment. But the new millennium obliterated that argument, too, by making capital plentiful and free. “Crowding out” went the way of the Walkman. 

Well, suddenly, they’re back. Deficits, that is. I’m not sure the last time a deficit story led the New York Times, but yesterday morning, it did. The story quoted new Congressional Budget Office projections showing a combination of pandemic-era spending, aging boomers and rising interest rates would add $19 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade—$3 trillion more than previously forecast. Total debt outstanding will equal the total economic output of the U.S. economy next year and reach 118% of GDP in 2033.

Meanwhile, “crowding out” has taken on new meaning. It’s not that deficits might crowd out private investment—the case for that remains weak, given inflation-adjusted interest rates that are still close to zero. Rather, the new numbers show that as nominal rates rise, servicing the debt will rise faster than tax income, eating up more and more of the federal budget, and leaving less money to address real needs.  

So what’s to be done? With a vibrant economy and a functioning federal government, the problem is solvable. The Committee for Economic Development, which is part of The Conference Board, laid out a reasonable road map earlier this week, which you can explore here. (Full disclosure: My wife is president of CED.) But while the U.S. has a vibrant economy, it still lacks a functioning government. Deficit reduction involves shared sacrifice, and that has to be done on a bipartisan basis. Don’t hold your breath.

More news below. And don’t get too excited about the uptick in home prices at the start of this year. Fortune’s Lance Lambert says they are headed south again.

Alan Murray

@alansmurray

alan.murray@fortune.com

Glasgow COP26 - Climate Home News, Nov 2021 Update

 

https://www.climatechangenews.com/

The street and the boardroom are closer

than they have ever been on climate

Published on 19/11/2021, 4:27pm

Action, action, action is the only antidote to “blah, blah, blah” – 

and forward-looking business leaders are stepping up right now

The "action zone" at Cop26 in Glasgow (Photo: Karwai Tang/UK Government)

By Maria Mendiluce

The Glasgow Climate Pact and recent pledges have kept 1.5C alive, just. But to get 1.5C out of intensive care we need all these pledges and national plans to be delivered without delay.

People took to the streets calling for urgent, just and decisive climate action. Activists were right to call out those governments and businesses using distant net zero pledges to delay meaningful action today. It is true that many of the current informal and unregulated offset schemes are insufficient and can lead to greenwashing.

However, more than 1,000 companies are setting 1.5C-aligned science-based targets to reduce their emissions. The Net Zero Standard launched at Cop26 enables companies to align their climate action with limiting global warming to 1.5C. The business leaders I met with in Glasgow had come with credible evidence of their progress as well as a sincere and urgent desire to push governments to go further and faster.

While some saw Cop26 as a story of opposing voices inside and outside, I believe that the street and the boardroom are closer than they have ever been. Their message to world leaders is loud. Action, action, action is the only antidote for the blah, blah, blah.

The Glasgow Pact has given businesses a clear direction of travel. They came with concrete policy asks, which at least in part, have been delivered. These include a commitment by nations to increase their emissions targets to pursue the 1.5C target and rules for a robust and transparent global carbon market. 195 countries now agree that coal has an expiry date, even if that date is not yet agreed. Investments in fossil fuels are now far riskier because the market expects them to become stranded assets in the foreseeable future.

Action in this decade towards halving emission by 2030 offers our best chance of keeping 1.5C within reach. Many forward-looking business leaders are stepping up to deliver right now.

It must be accountable action. Scrutiny and transparency will ultimately benefit everyone, including business, because it will build trust with employees, customers, investors and communities. The International Sustainability Standards Board will provide a much-needed global standard for the consistent disclosure of sustainability information. Reporting will make it easier for investment to flow to 1.5C aligned businesses and drive competition. It will also make it harder for those businesses that do not take climate seriously. There will be no longer any excuse nor anywhere to hide.

A robust carbon market established under Article 6 will offset the risk of greenwashing. While not perfect, the Glasgow Climate Pact offers real progress towards a global carbon market that brings rigor and scrutiny to trading offsets, reducing the risk of double-counting. The sooner the system is up and running under the new rules, the sooner it can build trust among companies and the public that trading carbon credits is a credible and effective mechanism for driving down emissions. 

Despite corporate progress, business cannot turn the tide on global heating alone. We need clear policies and regulation from governments. And business needs to consistently advocate for ambitious climate policies. The ambition loop between companies and governments is clear, by working together, they can each accelerate climate action, unlocking business leadership and policy ambition.

Similarly, the calls for action from wider society are shaping corporate and policy decisions creating the societal changes that make it easier for consumers to cut their own carbon footprint. Our task in the coming years is to turbocharge these virtuous circles and accelerate momentum to the pace needed to avert climate breakdown.  

The Glasgow Climate Pact represents real progress within the current geopolitics and consensus nature of UN climate negotiations. Forward-looking businesses will continue to raise their own ambition while calling for more government action such as delivering climate finance to developing countries, transparency and creating a just transition. Now activists, forward looking businesses and leading nations must embrace the next phase of our journey towards net-zero: Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration.

Maria Mendiluce is CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition.

A course in sustainability leadership can take your career up a gear

What we can learn from Somalia about anticipating climate disaster

How tracking forest biomass change from space informs carbon cycling models

Improving quality of life for Mexican families with sustainable communities

Satellite data helps to forecast heatwaves and drought with more precision

UN shipping body agrees voluntary measures to cut black carbon in the Arctic

Australia to expand gas industry under Morrison infrastructure plan

Kenyan forest communities sidelined as government misses two billion tree target

Who pays for the inescapable coal phasedown? – Climate Weekly

Morocco accused of “greenwashing occupation” of Western Sahara

Most popular

• Morocco accused of “greenwashing occupation” of Western Sahara

• Nigeria commits to annual carbon budgets to reach net zero under climate law

• African nations settled for ‘moral pact’ with US on adaptation finance at Cop26

• The breakdown: What is in the Glasgow Climate Pact?

• India ‘cannot escape’ coal phasedown, top coal ministry official says

Bill Gates - Three big shifts in the climate conversation

Bill Gates Meets World

As a career, I have served as a tech consultant, products vendor, software entrepreneur, innovator to small businesses, technology educator, a one-man service shop for all kinds of user needs, and have moved through 9 iterations of technology from the mid-1980s to 2015. Let's just say I've seen a lot of change in those 30 years.

While doing this I also paid attention to many of the tech heads of state of whose products I've used and sold. Bill Gates was one of those science-tech guys I paid attention to. Along with other Fortune 500 companies I continue to follow Bill in his many ventures to heal the world through startup businesses, investor foresight, societal justice, and innovation. Thus, my occasional nod in Bill's direction here at Relevancy22 on climate change, vaccinations, etc.

All ecological civilizations and societies have to start from somewhere. Bill, it seems, is starting in the middle and moving in all directions at once to see what sticks. God bless him. I admire his courage and fortitude amid tasks that will take all of our efforts to help restore the earth back to a healthy state of green and blue.

R.E. Slater

November 9, 2021

Partners in Climte Change

In Glasgow, I saw three big shifts in the climate conversation

A lot has changed in the past six years.

by Bill Gates | November 08, 2021

Last week I spent three fantastic days at the global climate summit (known as COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. My main impression is how much things have changed since the last summit, back in 2015—and I don’t mean because of COVID. The climate conversation has shifted dramatically, and for the better.

One big shift is that clean-energy innovation is higher on the agenda than ever. The world needs to get to zero carbon emissions by 2050. As I argue in the book I published this year, accomplishing that will require a green Industrial Revolution in which we decarbonize virtually the entire physical economy: how we make things, generate electricity, move around, grow food, and cool and heat buildings. The world already has some of the tools we’ll need to do that, but we need a huge number of new inventions too.

So at an event like this, one way I measure progress is by the way people are thinking about what it’ll take to reach zero emissions. Do they think we already have all the tools we need to get there? Or is there a nuanced view of the complexity of this problem, and the need for new, affordable clean technology that helps people in low- and middle-income countries raise their standard of living without making climate change worse?

Six years ago, there were more people on the we-have-what-we-need side than on the innovation side. This year, though, innovation was literally on center stage. One session of the World Leaders Summit, where I got to speak, was exclusively about developing and deploying clean technologies faster.

I also helped launch the Net Zero World Initiative, a commitment from the U.S. government to help other countries get to zero by providing funding and—even more important—access to experts throughout the government, including the top minds at America’s world-class national laboratories. These countries will get support with planning the transition to a green economy, piloting new technologies, working with investors, and more.

The second major shift is that the private sector is now playing a central role alongside governments and nonprofits. In Glasgow, I met with leaders in various industries that need to be part of the transition—including shipping, mining, and financial services—who had practical plans to decarbonize and to support innovation. I saw CEOs of international banks really engaging with these issues, whereas many of them wouldn’t even have shown up a few years ago. (It made me wish we could get the same kind of turnout and excitement for conferences on global health!)

I announced that three new partners—Citi, the IKEA Foundation, and State Farm—will be working with Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a program designed to get the most promising climate technologies to scale much faster than would happen naturally. They’re joining the first round of seven partners we announced in September. It’s amazing to see how much momentum Catalyst has generated in just a few months.

I was also honored to join President Biden and his climate envoy, John Kerry, to announce that Breakthrough Energy will be the primary implementation partner for the First Movers Coalition. It’s a new initiative from the U.S. State Department and the World Economic Forum that will boost demand for emerging climate solutions in some of the sectors where it’ll be especially hard to eliminate emissions: aviation, concrete and steel production, shipping, and more.

The third shift I’m seeing is that there’s even more visibility for climate adaptation. The worst tragedy of rising temperatures is that they will do the most harm to the people who have done the least to cause them. And if we don’t help people in low- and middle-income countries thrive despite the warming that is already under way, the world will lose the fight against extreme poverty.

So it was great to hear President Biden and other leaders repeatedly raising the importance of adaptation. I got to join the president, along with officials from the United Arab Emirates, to launch a program called Agricultural Innovation Mission for Climate. It’s designed to focus some of the world’s innovative IQ on ways to help the poorest people adapt, such as new varieties of crops that can withstand more droughts and floods. More than 30 other countries, as well as dozens of companies and nonprofits (including the Gates Foundation), are already supporting it.

As part of that effort, I joined a coalition of donors that pledged more than half a billion dollars to support the CGIAR’s work to advance climate-smart innovations for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Some people look at the problems that still need to be solved and see the glass as half-empty. I don’t share that view, but this is what I would tell anyone who does: The glass is being filled up faster than ever. If we keep this up—if the world puts even more effort into innovations that reduce the cost of getting to zero and help the poorest people adapt to climate change—then we’ll be able to look back on this summit as an important milestone in avoiding a climate disaster.

Three major shifts in the climate conversation

Nov 8, 2021

Ecological Civilization - Red China is Turning Green

Urban background solar panels, Shanghai, China. | Photo: iStock

BEIJING, CHINA

Red China is turning green

https://asiatimes.com/2019/02/RED-CHINA-IS-TURNING-GREEN/ 

In the rush to modernize, China neglected its environment, but now its growing middle class is demanding environmental responsibility.

by Jan Krikke

February 25, 2019

“Even an entire society, a nation or all simultaneously existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of households].” – Karl Marx, Das Capital, Vol 3

China is a country of big numbers. Every year it has between 80,000 and 180,000 “public disturbances.” The government stopped releasing most protest statistics several years ago, when the annual number of “mass incidents” surpassed 100,000. Among these incidents are many environmental protests against heavy-metal pollution, dangerous chemicals, toxic waste, and pipelines, while corrupt bureaucrats playing footsie with environmental regulations. The Chinese government routinely condemns the protests, but it is often forced to react to the “will of the people.”

In one celebrated case, the authorities in the industrial city of Dalian ordered the immediate shutdown of a controversial chemical plant after thousands of people took to the streets to protest. In the Sichuan city of Shifang, thousands of residents rioted for three days against the proposed construction of a molybdenum-copper-alloy plant. After police arrested several protesters, residents besieged city hall demanding their release. The next day, the city announced that it would scrap plans to build the plant. Similar incidents have been reported throughout China.

Most protests are organized spontaneously on social media. They lack an obvious leader, making it hard for the government to arrest “ringleaders.”

Even documentaries on environmental issues can shame the government into taking action. Last year Chinese cinematographer Wang Jiuliang produced Plastic China, a documentary on China’s import of waste from mostly Western countries. The movie went viral on the Internet after having been shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Chinese authorities blocked Internet access to the movie, but a few days later, the country banned all import of foreign waste.

Plastic China | Trailer | Available Now

Jun 7, 2017

Journeyman Pictures

A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste.

Sundance-Selected Documentary Plastic China available on:

• iTunes: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/movie...
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-China-...
• Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/plasticchina
• Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/movies/...

For downloads and more information visit:

http://www.journeyman.tv/film/7020 

Wang Jiuliang: Besieged by waste

Aug 8, 2011

China Daily Global

Between 2008 and 2010, he visited more than 460 landfills around Beijing and took about 10,000 photos. In 2011, his first documentary film about waste, Beijing Besieged by Waste, showed audiences the state of waste pollution in Beijing. Wang Jiuliang is a 34-year-old photographer who spent all of his money to document the landfills around Beijing and draw people's attention to problems caused by waste. In an interview with China Daily, Wang talked about his experience shooting the documentary and his opinion about waste pollution and consumption behavior.

In the rush to modernize, China neglected its environment. Now that it has lifted 700 million people out of poverty and raised living standards dramatically, people start demanding clean air, clean water and clean food. The middle class in China’s large urban centers have started to embrace organic farming after a series of food scandals that included bacteria-infected vegetables, melamine-injected milk, counterfeit baby formula, and pollution-poisoned fish.

Throughout China, farmers are reverting to traditional farming methods without modern fertilizers. Farmers in Huinan county, Jilin province, raised 5,000 ducks in rice fields, feeding them on grass and prawns. It eliminated the needs for manual weeding and chemical pesticides. In southern China, farmers discovered that a native breed of spiders leaves webs among the vegetables and feed on hard-to-detect whiteflies, eliminating the need for harmful insecticides. Grass that co-exists with crops functions as a regulating factor of the microclimate by keeping the soil humid. Farmers on the outskirts of Shanghai found that trees, bushes, grass, insects, birds and cattle can co-exist. They are turning their farms into natural habitat.

Ecological civilization

President Xi Jinping has also jumped on the green bandwagon. In a major change in government policy, he announced that the country would pursue an “ecological civilization” to ensure “harmony between human and nature.” Sounding like a true Taoist, Xi added:

“We, as human beings, must respect nature, follow its ways, and protect it. The government will encourage simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon ways of life, and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption.”

He added that the government would “step up efforts to establish a legal and policy framework that facilitates green, low-carbon, and circular development, promote afforestation, strengthen wetland conservation and restoration and take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment.”

Xi’s speech could have been written by John B Cobb Jr, an American theologian, philosopher and environmentalist who is highly influential in China. Cobb is the pre-eminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology that emphasizes ecological interdependence – the idea that every part of the ecosystem is reliant on all the other parts. His ideas have resonated with Chinese thinkers. Cobb is co-founder the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, which now has 30 academic institutions throughout the world, 23 of which are in China. Cobb has taken a leadership role in bringing process thought to the East, most specifically to help China develop a more ecological civilization. This goal is now written into China’s constitution.

Several years ago, while China’s ecological crisis was making global headlines, Cobb sounded a contrarian note. “The hope of ecological civilization lies in China,” he said, pointing at four factors that give China unique advantages to realize its goal.

First, China has a long tradition of emphasizing the harmony of nature and humanity, which has enabled Chinese civilization to survive for thousands of years.

Second, unlike the US, China still has thousands of traditional villages and hundreds of millions of farmers who continue doing small intensive and meticulous farming.

Third, China’s political system is able to mobilize massive social forces to cope with major crises such as the ecological one.

Fourth, the Chinese government has shown its determination to create an ecological civilization by writing this goal into both the party’s constitution in 2012 and China’s national constitution in 2018.

Greening the planet

Cobb could have added that China is now the world’s largest player in clean-energy development. The country makes 60% of the world’s solar panels and surpassed Germany in 2015 as the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic energy. In January it pledged to invest US$367 billion in renewable power generation – solar, wind, hydro and nuclear – by 2020. The investment will add about 10 million jobs to the already existing 3.5 million jobs in the sector. China already produces nearly half of the world’s wind turbines, at a rate of about two every hour.

In 2017, China stopped or delayed work on 151 planned and under-construction coal plants, in response to flat-lining of demand for coal power. The affected coal power plants have a capacity equal to the combined operating capacity of Germany and Japan (95,000 megawatts) and cost around $60 billion. The boom in China’s renewable industry and a slowdown in energy demand has left China with hundreds of coal plants it doesn’t need. Newly increased targets for solar power, five times the current US capacity, will put more pressure on coal-fired plants.

China also plays a key role in the greening of the planet. Data from US National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellites have revealed an increase in global foliage. A research team studying NASA satellite images found that global green-leaf area has increased by 5% since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25% of that gain came in China, the result of its ambitious tree-planting programs. Overall, one-third of Earth’s vegetated lands are greening, while 5% are growing browner. The study was published on February 11 in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The Chinese government first used the term “ecological civilization” at the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2007. Growing environmental protests and China’s opportunity at global leadership in the renewable technology sector made the aim of ecological civilization a timely step. Xi noted that the focus on gross domestic product is a great obstacle to ecological civilization, adding,

“We shouldn’t judge one to be hero or not merely according to GDP. Instead, we should look at welfare improvement, social development and environmental indicators to evaluate leaders.”

Marx would have agreed. In 1844 he wrote: “Man lives on nature, [which] means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

JAN KRIKKE

Jan Krikke is a former Japan correspondent for various media, former managing editor of Asia 2000 in Hong Kong, and author of Leibniz, Einstein, and China (2021). More by Jan Krikke