❯
No More Cheap Machines: Climate Change and China
We are now looking at a future climate that is beyond anything seriously considered in model simulations. Only a couple years ago, experts predicted China would not surpass the United States in carbon dioxide emissions until sometime after 2030. Now that milestone has already been passed. Last year, China became the largest producer of green house gases and, just last month, it became the biggest purchaser of automobiles in the world. To quote the China Daily: “the bike has been downgraded from one of the most significant family purchases some twenty years ago to a cheap machine used mainly by the poor.” Now, China also has the largest number of internet users, not to mention the most pigs, in the world. These changes – which make a meaningful impact on global warming, information disclosure and consumption, across the spectrum from livestock methane to the demise of bicycles, how and what people think about climate change fundamentally alters the conversation of how China’s society should proceed from here.