Save the Planet!

It had been over two years since my last trip to China. When I first arrived at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, I thought to myself "is the pollution so much worse than before, or is it because I have been away for so long?" The sky was gray and it was very smoggy. While I am overall an enthusiastic advocate of doing business in China, I have to say that this time I was particularly troubled by the pollution I saw. Obviously economic development is important, but is there a way to do it that does not simultaneously damage the environment so much? Understandably, people in developing countries do not care nearly as much as environmental protection. There were too many cars, too much construction, too much unrecyclable garbarge, and too little care in general that goes into making the world a habitable place a hundred years from now. That lack of patience which often leads to quick results is unfortunately at play here with respect to environmental protection - people don't care about what happens ten years from now, and let alone a hundred years later. It is not because they don't care about their own future. In a way, it is because the Chinese people don't believe something could be true unless they see it with their own eyes or have already started to see signs of it. Also, thanks to the cultural revolution, people often only care about what happens to themselves and their immediate families and have little interest in doing something inconvenient for themselves to serve the public interest.

While perhaps from a business perspective I remain an enthusiastic advocate of China, I do wonder what might be done to help raise awareness of global warming in China.