As I’ve argued elsewhere on this blog, climate change – despite its popularity as an environmental cause in the developed world – really doesn’t have much of a constituency in China. And among the most important reasons for that lack of popular interest is the persistence of far more immediate, and toxic, environmental issues. Of…
All posts in Environment
Watch as the NYT mis-characterizes China’s Copenhagen negotiating position.
In today’s coverage of the Copenhagen impasse between China and the US, John Broder and James Kanter report: “I think there’s no doubt that China, when it says 40 to 45 percent reduction in energy intensity, is serious about that,” said Ed Miliband, the British secretary of state for energy and climate change. “The more…
China, Copenhagen and the Uptown-Downtown Problem.
Last week I posted at length on my low expectations for China in Copenhagen. The full post can be found here, but in summary: I suggested that – even if China felt that it was in its national interest to control carbon emissions, it lacks the regulatory infrastructure to enforce any kind of law or…
Green as Scrap.
Apropos of really nothing … it’s not very often that you can guess what, precisely, will become of your recycling. But if you are a resident of Seoul, and your apartment was recently demolished, then I can give you some assurance that it has made its way into the grip of one of these grapples,…
The Limits of Control: a skeptic’s view on China, Copenhagen, and Compliance
Back in May 2007 I attended a speech given by Feng Zhijun, then a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and the government official charged with corralling China’s Circular Economy law – the most ambitious environmental legislation in Chinese history – through China’s opaque legislative hurdles. The occasion of the speech…
Photo: the Bei Jiang River running dry through Qingyuan
Regular readers might have deduced that Shanghai Scrap is in the midst of its own version of the Deng Xiaoping’s famed Southern Tour over the last week or so. This afternoon, as part of this sally through Guangdong Province, I arrived in Qingyuan – a city that I visited a few years ago, before it…
Apple’s Chinese iPhone: bad for the environment.
Last night Apple and China Unicom finally rolled out the Chinese version of the iPhone. So far, at least, the introduction seems to have been a low-key affair, with media attention focused – if at all – on the fact that the Chinese version of the iPhone lacks wifi capability. No doubt, that’s a key…
The colors are never so bright as when you lower your standards.
This afternoon, around 4:00 PM, I left a friend’s thirteenth floor apartment and paused to wait for the elevator. While I did, I gazed out the window and noticed a stunning, multicolored striped building in the near distance. Though incomplete, I think it’s an absolute stunner, and I took out a camera and snapped a…
The Happy Neighborhood E-Waste Merchant
Earlier this morning I walked out of my apartment building en route to the post office when I came across the corner scrap dealers selling their inventory of home appliance scrap – ie, e-waste, as the kids now like to call it – to their preferred buyer, a roaming Shanghai motorcycle e-waste merchant. Then and…
E-waste – There’s an app for that.
My first piece for Foreign Policy, “E-waste – there’s an app for that” is now live. It covers a couple of different issues, including the growing tide of Chinese generated e-waste, and the rather limp response to the problem by Apple and other consumer electronics companies (especially as compared to the efforts they make in…