Spring is finally here. But first around a third of the population of China had to endure a horrendous stand storm last weekend (though it was much worse in Beijing than any other large city). Waking up at 7.30am on saturday it seemed like my bedroom window had an orange shade over it. The whole world outside was orange-red. But it was not the window, it was the sand in the air. Once I got downstairs the sand was swirling around, just like being in the desert last Summer, and as cars drove down the street the thin layer of sand on the ground would swirl around. It was the worst sandstorm in Beijing for about 4 years -I remember the one before that, and it was indeed worse. Although most cars this time were dirty and sand-streaked, last time it was much worse. Good business for the car-wash people anyway!
The government had actually warned everyone to stay inside and not go out, but by the afternoon it was pretty clear. By monday it seemed spring was finally here, only for wednesday evening, after going an event in a cafe about Climate Change (Debate: Has China done enough?), to find myself cycling home in a horrendous snow storm, arriving home 30 minutes later soaked and covered in snow. Unfortunately the debate was pretty tame. The team (apparently the more experienced debaters, though much younger than the other team) arguing China has not done enough did a pretty poor job and lost comprehensively.
It is clear China has done a lot and is doing a lot; China has the political will to do something and is getting something done -none of which can really be said about the US or other developed nations. Yet, it is also clear China has to do a lot more, as China will be one of the hardest hit from Climate Change with a third of its population close to the coast and liable to be flooded and another third living next to major rivers that will first flood and then run dry. In the meantime, every year the droughts in China affect more people and get more severe not just ruining farmland and leading to food shortages, but also with real economic consequences from the triple whammy of a lack of food being grown, the need to provide food to those who cannot grow it, and the extra time and resources needed to organize and transport food as part of the 'relief' mission. The rest of the world is not doing much compared to China, but China has to do more -it cannot wait for the rest of the World, for its own sake!
Now, finally it seems Spring is here. The proof is that most of the covers that have kept all of Beijing's bushes hidden during the Winter have come off. As I referred to previously, alongside every main road there are bushes and hedges and around most office and apartment buildings too. Over the winter all of them were crudely covered with wooden frames and a green sheet stitched over the frame. Now thousands of workers have been out dismantling the frames.
Our apartment complex is owned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who sold apartments to its employees cheaply as a benefit, so our landlord works there (actually in Myanmar/Burma at the Chinese Embassy) and many of our fellow residents work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I've met old people who speak excellent English from their time served overseas, and young people currently in between postings. The guy i spoke to last week just came back from 3 years at the Chinese delegation to the UN, though his English should have been better (then again, so should my Chinese after living here over 5 years!).
Current 'news' seems to weighted around football, with 5-a-side games twice a week (we actually one our season opener which is amazing, but then lost the second) and a one-off 11-a-side today. Spurs seem to be promising they'll finish 4th or 5th, but i am sure we'll fall at the last hurdle as always. Only 6 weeks left in the season so we'll find out soon enough.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Monday, March 08, 2010
snow and comments
There is nothing much in common between snow and comments, to be honest, apart from that I feel the urge to write about both of them.
After getting back from Paris for some more meetings for a day and the chance to try out some more of the more interesting and innovative chains of restaurants that have opened in the last 5 years serving anything from healthy food to Mexican food, I headed up to the Peak District for a stag party, which entailed rather a lot of drinking, playing poker, watching sport down the pub, some more drinking and some fun about 15 metres up in the air in the woods doing something called Go Ape. A simple concept really, that we all enjoy a bit of scrambling around in playgrounds when we are older, so its about time someone made a playground for adults, and to make it a bit more exciting, put it up in the trees -though give everyone a safety harness just in case (well, we are adults after all).
Its being incredibly successful and is going global -and after 2 hours or so scrambling across rope bridges, zipping down zip lines and the like, i fully understand why and recommend it for an enjoyable afternoon with some friends. We arrived in the snow, not something I was expecting to be honest, and dressed up like we were in the himalayas. Thankfully the snow stopped and we made it to the pub just a few minutes late for the six nations. A taxi through the peak district early in the morning revealed glimpses of some of the beauty of the British countryside -especially in the snow- and a nice fast train took me back down South where I had to catch a flight back to Beijing, where, of course, it was snowing. And again, a week later, it has snowed again. So rather a lot of snow really. Having said that there seemed to have been rather a lot of earthquakes recently too: haiti, chile, taiwan, turkey... i guess i prefer the snow to an earthquake. Though i do have fond memories of the 13 earthquakes in Manchester that occurred over 24 hours on October 22, 2002. Not that the earthquakes (biggest hit 3.9) did much damage apart from knocking a plate onto the floor!
Ah yes, the British countryside -much more of it than one realizes, and it never seems to have much of a purpose -often seen laying fallow or with a few sheep grazing in the fields. None-the-less I assume it must be productively used at other times of the year (i.e. when i am not visiting) since Britain is at the forefront of efforts over the last few years to source more food locally and not import it. And for those of you interested, that is just one element of being a responsible business -reducing travel for products and being more responsible to local communities by creating jobs and keeping money in the communities- which is what BSR (who i work for) help companies do.
Another element of our work is helping investors invest in more responsible businesses, because they are more profitable business (a simple example being the Co-op bank who refuses to loan money to projects or companies who are irresponsible and does not take big risks and did not almost go bankrupt unlike almost every other bank in the country) over the long-term. Not that many people think long-term nowadays, but we do recommend it. Plenty of my meetings in London and in Paris was with investors and related organizations (e.g. researchers) who are interested in investing in responsible companies in China; which we are helping some investors do. Its a fairly interesting concept and I am quite getting into it.
Hence I was reading about wonderful RBS who is involved in extracting oil from the tar sands in Canada, which use up a lot more energy than any other process for getting oil and generate a lot of greenhouse gases too (Canada is the developed country whose emissions have increased the most in the last ten years because of this industry). Since no-one is valuing these greenhouse gases in Canada at the moment (though they do in Europe, though too cheaply right now) it is profitable to support this industry and not worry about the costs of climate change. This in itself is an issue, but it has become a bigger issue recently since the UK government owns most of RBS and has made many promises to itself, to its citizens and to others, that it would do everything it can to reduce UK's greenhouse gas emissions, and global emissions. Hmm, so, the question is should the government direct RBS not to get involved with this project even though it will be profitable, which means more money for the UK government, and thus the taxpayers get their money back quicker?
Well its a good question, and i won't answer it. Kevin Watkins at the Guardian has his own opinion (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/rbs-tar-sands-publi-investment) and so did around 60 other people who commented on his article. I rarely bother to read comments on any article, but i read a few of these for a laugh. And a rollicking good laugh I had too. I've read a couple of other articles' comments before (also getting a good old laugh out of them) and they also attracted some crazy people with very firm, and sometimes very bizarre, ideas. I suppose only those that care strongly can be bothered to comment anyway, so they are hardly representative of the readership. Or at least I hope they are not, or else I really must wonder if the snow has gotten to people....
After getting back from Paris for some more meetings for a day and the chance to try out some more of the more interesting and innovative chains of restaurants that have opened in the last 5 years serving anything from healthy food to Mexican food, I headed up to the Peak District for a stag party, which entailed rather a lot of drinking, playing poker, watching sport down the pub, some more drinking and some fun about 15 metres up in the air in the woods doing something called Go Ape. A simple concept really, that we all enjoy a bit of scrambling around in playgrounds when we are older, so its about time someone made a playground for adults, and to make it a bit more exciting, put it up in the trees -though give everyone a safety harness just in case (well, we are adults after all).
Its being incredibly successful and is going global -and after 2 hours or so scrambling across rope bridges, zipping down zip lines and the like, i fully understand why and recommend it for an enjoyable afternoon with some friends. We arrived in the snow, not something I was expecting to be honest, and dressed up like we were in the himalayas. Thankfully the snow stopped and we made it to the pub just a few minutes late for the six nations. A taxi through the peak district early in the morning revealed glimpses of some of the beauty of the British countryside -especially in the snow- and a nice fast train took me back down South where I had to catch a flight back to Beijing, where, of course, it was snowing. And again, a week later, it has snowed again. So rather a lot of snow really. Having said that there seemed to have been rather a lot of earthquakes recently too: haiti, chile, taiwan, turkey... i guess i prefer the snow to an earthquake. Though i do have fond memories of the 13 earthquakes in Manchester that occurred over 24 hours on October 22, 2002. Not that the earthquakes (biggest hit 3.9) did much damage apart from knocking a plate onto the floor!
Ah yes, the British countryside -much more of it than one realizes, and it never seems to have much of a purpose -often seen laying fallow or with a few sheep grazing in the fields. None-the-less I assume it must be productively used at other times of the year (i.e. when i am not visiting) since Britain is at the forefront of efforts over the last few years to source more food locally and not import it. And for those of you interested, that is just one element of being a responsible business -reducing travel for products and being more responsible to local communities by creating jobs and keeping money in the communities- which is what BSR (who i work for) help companies do.
Another element of our work is helping investors invest in more responsible businesses, because they are more profitable business (a simple example being the Co-op bank who refuses to loan money to projects or companies who are irresponsible and does not take big risks and did not almost go bankrupt unlike almost every other bank in the country) over the long-term. Not that many people think long-term nowadays, but we do recommend it. Plenty of my meetings in London and in Paris was with investors and related organizations (e.g. researchers) who are interested in investing in responsible companies in China; which we are helping some investors do. Its a fairly interesting concept and I am quite getting into it.
Hence I was reading about wonderful RBS who is involved in extracting oil from the tar sands in Canada, which use up a lot more energy than any other process for getting oil and generate a lot of greenhouse gases too (Canada is the developed country whose emissions have increased the most in the last ten years because of this industry). Since no-one is valuing these greenhouse gases in Canada at the moment (though they do in Europe, though too cheaply right now) it is profitable to support this industry and not worry about the costs of climate change. This in itself is an issue, but it has become a bigger issue recently since the UK government owns most of RBS and has made many promises to itself, to its citizens and to others, that it would do everything it can to reduce UK's greenhouse gas emissions, and global emissions. Hmm, so, the question is should the government direct RBS not to get involved with this project even though it will be profitable, which means more money for the UK government, and thus the taxpayers get their money back quicker?
Well its a good question, and i won't answer it. Kevin Watkins at the Guardian has his own opinion (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/rbs-tar-sands-publi-investment) and so did around 60 other people who commented on his article. I rarely bother to read comments on any article, but i read a few of these for a laugh. And a rollicking good laugh I had too. I've read a couple of other articles' comments before (also getting a good old laugh out of them) and they also attracted some crazy people with very firm, and sometimes very bizarre, ideas. I suppose only those that care strongly can be bothered to comment anyway, so they are hardly representative of the readership. Or at least I hope they are not, or else I really must wonder if the snow has gotten to people....
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