Olympics-Beijing says no extension of car controls post Games
August 17th, 2008 by Adam
We will have to hope that Beijing will look at the results of the car controls during the Games and come up with some ideas for how to further reduce the pollution from transportation. Unfortunately much of the focus in the news has been that Beijing does not want there to be a decline in automobile sales. I am not sure exactly why this is the case: is it because China needs more and more consumption to drive its economy and create jobs, or is it just due to pressure from oil and automobile companies?
I see nothing wrong with trying to reduce sales of cars in China. Just because USA has so many per person, does China need to ‘beat’ the USA at number of cars and size of automobile market (only #2 at the moment, globally). This is the kind of attitudes that need to change; and these assumptions (we need consumption, for example) also need to change, as they are just not sustainable.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Adam, I think you’ve hit this spot on - China needs jobs at the moment, especially with the nation’s economic engines cooling a wee bit faster than the government would like (11% growth to 8.7% growth in two quarters flat? Yikes). The auto business in China is a nonpareil job-sop, not just in manufacturing, but distributing, selling, servicing, and pumping oil for all of those cool sets of wheels.
All of which means that the alternatives we propose as we try to guide China away from the American model need to take those economic needs into consideration. “Sustainability” in China means “labor-intensive.”
August 21st, 2008 at 2:21 am
David, indeed. Have you seen the growing movement in the US to promote Green Collar Jobs?
The number of jobs they are talking about is still relatively low compared to what i think the reality should be if the legal framework changed (i.e. requiring all houses to be insulated to certain limits within 10 yrs would create a LOT of jobs!)… the NY Times has a short piece about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/opinion/17friedman.html
Would be great for an organisation to start promoting this in China. Even though it is already happening (loads of people employed installing solar water heater, working for the solar cell manufacturers etc), it would be great to get the movement more profile and speed it up!