Meanwhile, China quietly proceeds with its own low-carbon revolution. Downtown Beijing has some 60,000 LED street-lights, the country has more installed solar thermal power than anywhere else in the world. Wind power is expanding at a staggering rate and the country is second only to Germany with the percentage of GDP invested in clean energy. China is becoming the world renewable capital.
Added to this was the commitment to invest 2 trillion yuan in creating a rail network fit for the 21st Century. A system built on determined five year planning.
Has the world fallen out of love with the market economy? Perhaps the relationship is a little bruised but the love affair is far from over. We have been reminded that the market needs a framework.
More than 60 years ago the foundations of the modern economy were laid in Bretton Woods. Against a recent backdrop of a World Financial Summit, labeled by some as Bretton Woods II, there is the opportunity to address what UK climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern describes as "the biggest market failure of all time" - our lack of pricing carbon.
Let's not simply stimulate the old economy but seize the opportunity to set the framework for a new low-carbon economy. This will not be tinkering at the edges but a complete change: zero emission electricity and smart grids, buildings that draw little power, electric vehicles, and every product designed to be clean and green from birth to recycling.
We must reduce emissions by about two-thirds by mid-century and by more than 80 percent in the developed world - at the same time the economy is likely to grow five or six times. We are entering the post-carbon age.
In our great cities we take it for granted that sewage and rubbish does not simply get thrown out of the window - as it did in centuries passed. We simply accept that sanitation is too important to question for those of us privileged enough to live in the parts of the world that experience it.
There is little debate over the cost to the economy of sewage works or garbage collection. Before long we will think the same of carbon pollution. It is essential we stop throwing our "waste" into the atmosphere - we don't have the luxury of choice. A low- carbon world is inevitable; it is simply a question of if we succeed in doing it fast enough.
President Harry Truman noted, "It is a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours." I would say "It is climate change when your neighbour experiences extreme weather; it's a climate crisis when it's you."In the long term, it is a simple choice: green growth or no growth.
We have had a space race and an arms race. The next great race will be the low carbon race. Where will the clean green future be designed and built? Europe gave itself a small head start, China is rapidly catching up, the US, except for a few states such as California, is just about to climb into the starting blocks. Let the race begin: If we run fast enough we can all be winners.
(China Daily December 8, 2008)
