But if fighting climate change means a return to the poverty of the past, most Chinese would prefer to take their chances with more pollution. As I was instructed countless times, filthy air and bad water are tradeoffs most Chinese are prepared to make in return for a better economic life. There are solutions, however. Dadi Zhou points out that China would use 50 percent less coal and therefore produce 50 percent less air pollution and greenhouse gases if it installed throughout its energy system the efficiency technologies now available on the world market. The same is true for other, poorer nations around the world, who must be assured that fighting poverty need not take a back seat to restoring environmental health.
China is crucial to making that case, if only because nearly one of every four people lives there.
The great challenge facing our species in the new century is to encourage and accommodate this mass ascent from poverty without wrecking the natural ecosystems that make life possible on this planet in the first place. And there is no better place to start that urgent work than in China.