China’s Leaders Are Mostly Scientists and Engineers ─ So They Don’t Waste Time and Opportunity by Arguing about Reasonably Certain Scientific and Economic Realities

20 September 2010

In contrast, most of America’s leaders are direct or indirect toadies to people who make money by denying the scientific and economic Realities that comparatively weaken the United States

This difference in culture is depressing, if you are American.

Thomas Friedman, always alert to how the global economy is changing, noticed that ─ instead of denying climate change (as America has) or minimizing our ability to do something constructive about it ─ China decided to turn its response to climate change into jobs and industries.

“There is really no debate about climate change in China,” said Peggy Liu, chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, a nonprofit group working to accelerate the greening of China

“China’s leaders are mostly engineers and scientists, so they don’t waste time questioning scientific data.

The push for green in China, she added, “is a practical discussion on health and wealth. There is no need to emphasize future consequences when people already see, eat and breathe pollution every day.”

Notice Ms. Liu’s implied emphasis on “practical discussion on health and wealth.”

The point is not about the intricacies of provable effects of climate change

The point here is not whether climate change is going to kill us all (or even do provable harms to specific locations) tomorrow or the next day, but that our economic adversaries in China are smart enough to kill two birds with one stone:

(i) ameliorate whatever climate badness might be coming down the planetary pike

and

(ii) create jobs, industries, and income doing it.

Friedman again quotes Peggy Liu:

“China is changing from the factory of the world to the clean-tech laboratory of the world,” said Liu. “It has the unique ability to pit low-cost capital with large-scale experiments to find models that work.

“They’re able to quickly throw spaghetti on the wall to see what clean-tech models stick, and then have the political will to scale them quickly across the country,” Liu added. “This allows China to create jobs and learn quickly.”

The United States, on the other hand, continues to contribute profligately to planetary warming and comparatively loses out on job and business opportunities, while playing ostrich on both fronts.

Who are the bird brains in this mix?

Another example of inexplicable American ostrich-like demeanor

Friedman closes with another example that should cause American workers and entrepreneurs to howl in frustration.

American Mike Biddle (MBA Polymers) invented a way to pelletize recycled plastic. Manufacturing new items from the recycled material uses 10 percent less energy than starting from scratch. That’s an entrepreneur’s success dream.

Where are his factories? Austria, Britain, and China.

Why? According to Friedman, MBA Polymers can’t get reliably enough recycled material in the United States because we have no laws mandating collection.

So MBA Polymers has had to go abroad, where the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan require manufacturers to recycle anything with a battery or electrical cord at the producer’s cost. This gives Biddle’s company the reasonably priced volume of material that he needs to run his business.

The cost of implementing these legal mandates to the original manufacturers is falling because recycling has become a competitive business in these countries.

In short, an American invented an energy-saving technology, but other nations benefit because American political leaders and the public are too short-sighted to see the gleam of gold in a surface-visible mine.

Citation

Thomas L. Friedman, Aren’t We Clever? New York Times (18 September 2010)

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China’s Leaders Are Mostly Scientists and Engineers ─ So They Don’t Waste Time and Opportunity by Arguing about Reasonably Certain Scientific and Economic Realities