Suggestions
		Learn more about our China Clean Energy Project.
		Scrapbook
		Some pictures from my trip: A few short years ago, bicyclists and pedestrians dominated the streets; today, cars increasingly do. Everywhere we looked, another skyscraper was going up, dwarfing more traditional buildings nearby. Outside the city, timeless scenes were still visible, but also dramatic signs of change. We visited the first internationally certified green building in China, which NRDC designed.
		Resources
		Invisible City - a day in Chongqing, the fastest-growing urban center on the planet Paying for Prosperity - an in-depth report on China's environmental crisis China's Growing Pollution Reaches United States - how China's pollution problem could affect us all Rare White Dolphin, 'Goddess of Yangtze,' Declared Extinct - another effect of pollution in China A 'Green' Building Rises Amid Beijing Smog - the first LEED-certified green building in China

Eleven years ago, NRDC's Barbara Finamore and Robert Watson met with town officials in Chongqing, China, with a proposal to help retrofit a hotel into an efficient, green building. The officials were interested but there were problems. Environmental groups, like NRDC, were unheard of, as were energy efficiency building codes. And there was the murky issue of funding — they thought NRDC was a real estate developer rather than a green advisor. Only when NRDC hired Timothy Hui, from China, to help with communications, did the project finally move forward. Today, this very building code has moved from one hotel in Chongqing to commercial buildings throughout China, affecting over 1.3 billion people.

Since this small beginning, NRDC has become the leading environmental advisor to China on energy-related issues. With our guidance, China has launched a national energy efficiency campaign and is investing in clean burning vehicles, green buildings and coal gasification/carbon capture. Given the size of China's growing economy, which is currently powered primarily by coal-fired power plants — a major contributor both to global warming and to water and soil pollution around the world — there is perhaps no more important role we could take.

In October, as part of this effort to accelerate the greening of China, a goal of our Partnership for the Earth campaign, I returned to China with my wife, Patricia (who helped in the writing of this piece), and a group of NRDC members, staff and board.

I saw that China has become the world's largest construction site. Changes are happening so fast that cities become unrecognizable almost overnight. Chongqing is an ancient city, built on hills rising up from the Yangtze River and often shrouded in fog. When we were there five years ago, it was full of bicyclists and porters, who ran through the steep, narrow streets with everything from bok choy to cinder blocks hanging from poles balanced on their shoulders. There were only a few tall buildings.

Today, Chongqing is a city of skyscrapers and widened streets that are packed with cars. Shopping centers have replaced small shops, modern hotels line the boulevards and four-lane highways stretch out from its hub.

This economic miracle, which is taking place throughout China, has come with a price, however. Chongqing is the world's fifth most polluted city. (Sixteen of the twenty most polluted cities in the world are in China.) It is a place of no shadows because the pollution blocks out the sun's rays.

Outside Chongqing, where the majestic mountains that form the backdrop of classical Chinese painting still stand, the change has also been dramatic, as we saw on a two-day boat trip down the Yangtze. In 2001, the villages we visited had narrow streets lined with low houses, backyards filled with animals and small garden plots. The shy children hid behind their mothers who were selling knick-knacks. Near the village, a steady stream of workers hauled heavy baskets of coal on their backs up from a mine dug deep into the mountain.

No more. The Three Gorges Dam has flooded 400 miles of the Yangtze River and today the streets, the homes and even the mines rest 150 meters underwater in the Yangtze's murky depths. More than a million people have been relocated. The mine workers, farmers, merchants and their families now live in new towns in modern, efficient high-rises. The children, who hid from us five years ago, now have iPods and Bratz dolls.

While we were there, America celebrated its 300 millionth citizen — China has one billion, three hundred million people. No longer the "sleeping Giant," it may soon become the third largest economy in the world.

While the growth of the Chinese economy has lifted over 200 million people out of poverty, and fostered a comfortable middle class, it has also created an environmental disaster. Pollution has reached life-threatening proportions — in many areas the water is too polluted to drink and air too polluted to breathe — and this pollution is spreading across the world.

This is what we traveled to China to address. On our trip, we met with Director Ou Xinqian, Vice Chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, to present her with a great but essential challenge: Could China meet half of its estimated future energy demand through efficiency?

As we sat, facing each other, in silk-brocaded, deeply cushioned chairs, young women in silk gowns regularly replenished the green tea in our china cups. After formal introductions, I was asked to speak.

"Director Ou," I said, "we think about China every day. The United States' carbon output combined with the staggering growth of carbon emissions here will soon swamp the atmosphere. Global warming will be a reality. But we can find a path to cleaner energy."

I spoke of the early days of NRDC, when the United States had no Clean Air or Clean Water Act. Our rivers were polluted and I remember wiping the soot from our new baby's cheek the day we brought her home from the hospital. But enormous progress has been made. Today, new technology makes economic growth and energy efficiency possible, as we have seen in California.

Then, in the NRDC team tradition, Barbara Finamore talked about the benefits of energy efficiency, using a Wall Street Journal article that quoted NRDC's expert, David Goldstein.

The upshot was that Director Ou is now working with NRDC to establish a forum of experts from China and the United States to help China meet its energy-efficiency target (reducing energy use per unit of GDP by 20 percent).

Coming home, I could not help but feel sobered by the scale of China's environmental problems and the worldwide repercussions. Yet I felt encouraged, too, by the degree to which Director Ou, and other Chinese leaders, understand the depth of the crisis and appreciate the need for action — and by the knowledge that NRDC has the expertise to help them meet the challenge.

May 2007