Chinese walker

Twenty-five years ago, Chinese city streets were crowded with people on bicycles, and there were few private cars. China still has approximately 500 million cyclists, the bicycle remaining the primary mode of transportation for many of the country`s poorest people. But bicycle production has been declining for the past decade, as the country becomes more affluent, and the majority of the bikes produced in China today are exported.

China cancelled bicycle-registration requirements in 2004, China Daily reported, “signalling the beginning of the end of its status as the world`s %26lsquo;bicycle kingdom` as an emerging middle class increasingly forgoes the clean and energy-efficient transport in favour of the car.” In cities such as Beijing, the bicycle is no longer viewed as a “transportation tool”. Cars and bikes compete for road space, and the capital`s wide boulevards, overpasses and ring roads reflect China`s new transportation priority. Each day, it is said, about 1,000 new cars take to the streets of Beijing.

By 2000, there were five million cars on the roads and the number is expected to keep growing by 10 to 20% or more annually over the next several years. While more disruptive road building and more air pollution come with the additional motor vehicles, car ownership is an aspiration of an increasing number of Chinese people – and the government views the development of a motor industry as an important facet of the country`s economic development. (Still, as part of a weeklong energy-saving campaign in June 2006, the State Council, China`s cabinet, urged civil servants to leave their cars at home and either walk or take public transportation to their offices.)

%26copy; Lovell

Since 2003, China has been considered the fourth-largest producer and the third-largest consumer of automobiles, and cars have surpassed industrial dust as the greatest urban polluter (representing an estimated 80% of urban air pollution in 2005). A consumer study in China found that most people consider knowing how to drive a car — along with speaking English and using a computer – to be one of three basic, necessary skills in modern society.

As a result of the growing popularity of – and pollution by — cars in China, the government promulgated new vehicle-emissions standards in 2004, in order to force polluters off the road. The new standards, equivalent to the so-called Euro II regulations, require a 30.4% cut in carbon monoxide and a 55.8% reduction in hydrocarbon and nitric oxide emissions in China. Low-quality petrol, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), contributes to vehicular air pollution in China. It contains three to eight times more sulphur than does gasoline used in Europe and the United States.

According to SEPA, which issued five new national emissions standards for a range of vehicle types in 2005, “exhaust gas and noise emitted by vehicles have brought extensive concern from society”. It added that the “automobile manufacturing technology level in China is not good enough” at present, and that “low, even zero, emission vehicles will be the future development direction of China`s auto industry.” Even-higher emissions standards – equivalent to Euro III regulations – are expected to be adopted nationwide in 2008, with tougher regulations to be considered further in the future.

Along with road traffic, China`s railways also have been booming. The last stretch of the world`s highest railway, the nearly 2,000-km-long Qinghai-Tibet line, linking China`s Qinghai province with the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, opened on 1 July, 2006. President Hu Jintao declared it “not only a magnificent feat in China`s history of railway construction, but a great miracle of the world`s railroad history”. The Chinese consider the line an engineering marvel in having overcome the perennial ice and slush along the route, which many felt was too fragile to support tracks and trains. Projections indicate the railway will help double tourism revenues by 2010 and cut transport costs for goods by 75% in Tibet. Environmentalists remain concerned about the frail ecosystem on the Tibetan Plateau, which is home to numerous unique animal species, and have called for conservation measures.

Generally, rail mileage and traffic have increased rapidly, though not as fast as economic development currently demands. The rail industry, market researchers say, is an important part of China`s comprehensive transportation system. Its prospects are considered bright and likely to attract considerable financial investment in the years ahead.

The country has nearly 75,000 rail-kilometres (and more than 5,600 stations), according to 2004 statistics, and there were over 1.2 billion passenger-journeys on the lines. China`s Ministry of Railways said in July 2006 that the country`s trains had made 620 million passenger journeys in the first half of the year – up over 8% from the same period in 2005 — and carried 1.39 billion tons of goods, including greater amounts of economically critical coal and petroleum, as well as chemical fertilisers and pesticides – an annual increase of more than 6%. The country`s lines handle a quarter of global rail traffic on just 6% of the world`s tracks.

Chinese citizens are increasingly taking to the skies, too, travelling for business or pleasure, both within China and abroad. “For the first time in history,” The New York Times reported in May 2006, “large numbers of Chinese are leaving their country as tourists %26hellip; In 1995, only 4.5 million Chinese travelled overseas. By 2005, that figure had increased to 31 million, and if expectations for future growth are met or approached, even that gargantuan growth will be quickly dwarfed. Chinese and international travel industry experts forecast that at least 50 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas by 2010, and 100 million by 2020.”

Coupled with travel by the Chinese, of course, is travel to (and around) the county by visitors from abroad. The 2008 Olympic Games, to be hosted by Beijing, are expected to bring an additional 2.6 million Chinese to the capital during, before and after the games, plus an estimated 500,000 overseas tourists and spectators, according to the Beijing Tourism Administration. Citing figures from the National Bureau of Statistics and the China National Tourism Administration, the Xinhua news agency reported in 2005 that the number of inbound foreign tourists to the Chinese mainland in 2004 had reached nearly 110 million. They came, mainly, from 16 countries and brought around $25 billion into China`s foreign exchange coffers. And – like air travel all over the world — the planes they flew in on contributed to the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry`s voice, air transport is responsible for 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while supporting 8% of global economic activity. Over the last 30 years, the organisation says, aircraft emissions are down by 70%, due to fuel efficiency, new technology and direct routings. IATA and China reached agreement in early 2006 on a new route for international traffic – north of the Himalayas — which is designed to reduce flight times between China and Europe by an average of 30 minutes.

China has a shortage of international air routes, says IATA, because only 30% of the country`s airspace is available for civilian aviation and flight-planning policy is restrictive. Air-traffic delays have resulted in the “golden triangle” bounded by Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

IATA contends that the new route, known as IATA-1 (officially, Y-1), will have a “significant impact” on the environment, resulting in the annual reduction of 2,860 hours of flight time, 27,000 tonnes of fuel consumption, 84,800 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emission and 240,000 kilograms of nitrogen oxides emissions. It also will mean US $30 million in savings on airline fuel bills “at a time where the airline industry is bleeding red ink from the record high price of oil,” said IATA`s director general, Giovanni Bisignani, in April.

As airline fuel costs rise, domestic airlines too have initiated new fuel-saving measures. (Fuel costs represent 25 to 28% of the general operational costs of an airline in China, according to China Daily.) China Southern, which operates the most extensive air network in the country, for example, has applied to the authorities for more direct — and higher — flight routes designed to save fuel.

Along with such measures, however, China also plans to build 48 new airports over the next five years, bringing the national total to 190. The country`s largest international hubs – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – are already being expanded, and China has promised to buy hundreds of new planes by 2010. With the new ground facilities, reports the British newspaper the Guardian, “the country`s 1.3 billion people will be served by fewer than 200 airports, compared with more than 10,000 in the US, which has a quarter of the population.”

Environmentalists are worried by the expected boom in air traffic over the next several years, fearing increased depletion of the earth`s protective ozone layer (as well unsafe skies). Campaigners have targeted the world`s air travel as a serious contributor to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions — despite carbon-trading schemes such as Europe`s which are designed to reduce those emissions. At higher altitudes, contrails – the vapour trails, or artificial cirrus clouds, formed by condensation from aircraft engines or wing-tip vortices – also have an overall warming effect due to changes in radiation balance known as radiative forcing.

Despite the growth in cars, trains and planes, will China say goodbye to its non-polluting two-wheelers? Not according to a spokesman for the Beijing Traffic Administration Bureau, who told the China Social News in 2004: “The improvement in the state economy, the traffic situation and city management does not mean that Chinese are saying a final and complete farewell to the bicycle. Some people will still choose this non-polluting, small and green transport tool.”

%26copy; Lovell

And, according to the Worldwatch Institute, “one of the brightest signs on the bicycle landscape is the growth in output of electric bicycles, which have electric motors to make pedalling easier.” Their rapid rise is fuelled by Chinese sales: roughly one of every six bicycles bought in China in 2005 was an electric model – and China accounted for 95% of the 10.5 million electric-bike sales in that year.

Homepage photo %26copy; Milton Menefee

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based freelance journalist with a special interest in environmental and human-rights issues. A writer and editor, she was previously a staff member at Time magazine (Europe), The Independent, the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city%26mdash;an indication of whether the city is designed for people or for cars.

The world`s cities are in trouble. In Mexico City, Tehran, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the quality of daily life is deteriorating. Breathing the air in some cities is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend going nowhere sitting in traffic-congested streets and highways climbs higher each year, raising frustration levels.

Pollution in Shanghai, photo by wjpbennett

In response to these conditions, we are seeing the emergence of a new urbanism. One of the most remarkable modern urban transformations has occurred in Bogot%26aacute;, Colombia, where Enrique Pe%26ntilde;alosa served as Mayor for three years, beginning in 1998. When he took office he did not ask how life could be improved for the 30 percent who owned cars; he wanted to know what could be done for the 70 percent%26mdash;the majority%26mdash;who did not own cars.

Pe%26ntilde;alosa realized that a city that is a pleasant environment for children and the elderly would work for everyone. In just a few years, he transformed the quality of urban life with his vision of a city designed for people. Under his leadership, the city banned the parking of cars on sidewalks, created or renovated 1,200 parks, introduced a highly successful bus-based rapid transit system, built hundreds of kilometres of bicycle paths and pedestrian streets, reduced rush hour traffic by 40 percent, planted 100,000 trees, and involved local citizens directly in the improvement of their neighbourhoods. In doing this, he created a sense of civic pride among the city`s 8 million residents, making the streets of Bogot%26aacute; in this strife-torn country safer than those in Washington, D.C.

Enrique Pe%26ntilde;alosa observes that “high quality public pedestrian space in general and parks in particular are evidence of a true democracy at work.” He further observes: “Parks and public space are also important to a democratic society because they are the only places where people meet as equals.%26hellip;In a city, parks are as essential to the physical and emotional health of a city as the water supply.” He notes this is not obvious from most city budgets, where parks are deemed a luxury. By contrast, “roads, the public space for cars, receive infinitely more resources and less budget cuts than parks, the public space for children. Why,” he asks, “are the public spaces for cars deemed more important than the public spaces for children?”

In espousing this new urban philosophy, Pe%26ntilde;alosa is not alone. The reform he initiated in Bogot%26aacute; is being carried on by his successor, Antanas Mockus. Now government planners everywhere are experimenting, seeking ways to design cities for people not cars. Cars promise mobility, and they provide it in a largely rural setting. But in an urbanizing world there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility.

Some cities in industrial and developing countries alike are dramatically increasing urban mobility by moving away from the car. Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, was one of the first to design and adopt an alternative transportation system, one that does not mimic those in the West but that is inexpensive and commuter-friendly. Since 1974 Curitiba`s transportation system has been totally restructured. Although one third of the people own cars, these play a minor role in urban transport. Busing, biking, and walking totally dominate, with two thirds of all trips in the city by bus. The city`s population has doubled since 1974, but its car traffic has declined by a remarkable 30 percent.

Aside from the growth of population itself, urbanisation is the dominant demographic trend of our time. In 1900, 150 million people lived in cities. By 2000, it was 2.9 billion people, a 19-fold increase. By 2007 more than half of us will live in cities%26mdash;making us, for the first time, an urban species.

In 1900 there were only a handful of cities with a million people. Today 408 cities have at least that many inhabitants. And there are 20 megacities with 10 million or more residents. Tokyo`s population of 35 million exceeds that of Canada. Mexico City`s population of 19 million is nearly equal to that of Australia. New York, S%26atilde;o Paulo, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai follow close behind.

The Author: Lester R. Brown is an internationally renowned environmentalist and author of numerous books, including the recently-released “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble,” in which the above extract first appears. It is reproduced here with the permission of the Earth Policy Institute where Lester remains as the Founding President.

Homepage photo: Cycle lanes in Bogota, photo by Adriana Henriquez

In June 2006, the Chinese Construction Minister decreed that all Chinese cities had to re-instate the bike lanes that had been removed over the last few years to make way for the car. All civil servants were told that they must either cycle, or take public transport to get to work. The Minister was, it seems, determined that China should regain its global fame as “the Kingdom of Bicycles”.

He will have quite a struggle on his hands with some of China’s increasingly powerful city mayors, for whom the car has become a far more fitting symbol of economic and political success than the lowly bike. Every day in Beijing, for instance, more than 1,000 new cars are rolled out on its already highly congested streets.

That is just one of a seemingly limitless flow of eye-watering statistics about China today. The sheer size of the country continues to astound the rest of the world. And if your passion in life is sustainable economic development, rather than simply the environment, then what’s going on in China is quite simply the most important unfolding story anywhere in the world.

If 10% of the 60 million people who live in the UK choose to reduce their energy consumption by 1%, it hardly registers as a blip on the world scale. But when 10% of the 1.3 billion people who live in China take advantage of its surging prosperity to increase their own energy consumption by 1% per annum, then the world had better take notice. Such decisions affect those of us who live in Britain and elsewhere as much as our fellow world citizens in China. In an interconnected and interdependent world, China’s emissions are everybody’s emissions.

Chinese politicians talk with justifiable pride of their enormous achievement in enabling more than 250 million people to escape grinding rural poverty, and to find jobs in the country’s burgeoning economy. Living standards have soared; and average life expectancy increased from just 35 years when the communists came to power in 1949, to 72 years in 2004.

These social gains have been driven primarily by the economic boom – with average growth of around 10% over the last 15 years. But that has caused environmental damage on such a scale that the entire growth model for China is now imperilled. According to a report in Nature in 2005: “The losses from pollution and ecological damage [in China] range from 7% to 20% of GDP every year in the past two decades”. The impact on human health has been particularly severe. About 300,000 deaths a year are attributed to air quality problems. Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, and levels of cancer in such areas are amongst the worst in the world.

“What planet do you live on?” Clearly a rhetorical question. The literal answer, of course, for all of us – the clued-up and the clueless alike – is Planet Earth. It`s the only planet we`ve got, and if we exhaust its resources there will be no rescue vessel leaving for some pristine, deep-space Eden. Earth is our self-contained spaceship, sustaining us in a hostile universe.

As the visionary designer R. Buckminster Fuller wrote in his 1963 book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, regarding fossil fuels: “[W]e can make all of humanity successful through science`s world-engulfing industrial evolution provided that we are not so foolish as to continue to exhaust in a split second of astronomical history the orderly energy savings of billions of years` energy conservation aboard our Spaceship Earth. These energy savings have been put into our Spaceship`s life-regeneration-guaranteeing bank account for use only in self-starter functions.”

Three years later (and 40 years ago now), the philosopher-economist Kenneth E. Boulding noted — in his essay The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth — the seemingly limitless resources of a reckless, exploitative “cowboy economy”. He added: “The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the %26lsquo;spaceman` economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system.”

The ideas of Fuller, Boulding and others are critically relevant today, as climate change accelerates. One initiative designed to promote life in a 21st century cyclical ecological system is One Planet Living. The vision of OPL — a joint initiative of the environmental group WWF and BioRegional, a British organisation dedicated to developing practical solutions for socially, economically and environmentally sustainable living – is a world in which everyone can live happily and healthily within their fair share of the earth`s resources. Addressing consumption, supply and values, its 10 holistic principles are: zero carbon, zero waste, sustainable transport, local and sustainable materials, local and sustainable food, sustainable water, natural habitats and wildlife, culture and heritage, equity and fair trade, and health and happiness.

Sumeet Manchanda, the international programme manager for OPL communities, notes that, “as a species, humanity`s ecological footprint has gone over the sustainable limit.” WWF`s biennial Living Planet Index, an indicator of the state of the world`s biodiversity, has been declining. From 1970 to 2003, the index fell by about 30%. WWF`s Living Planet Report 2006 confirms that the planet`s ecosystems are being degraded at an unprecedented rate in human history.

As is often remarked these days, if everyone in the world lived as western Europeans do, three planets would be required to support the earth`s population (and five if the United States is the measure). OPL argues that humans need to reduce their impact, their ecological footprint, to a “sustainable and globally equitable level”. To move in that direction, then – to help make the vision a reality — the organisation aims to build a global network of OPL communities, representing every continent. By 2010, OPL plans to establish the first of such communities in Portugal, the UK, North America, Australia, South Africa and – of course – China. Feasibility and site studies are under way in several places with large ecological footprints.

Xiaohong Chen — who grew up in northeastern China`s Liaoning province — is the One Planet Living country manager in China. A structural engineer in Nanjing`s building industry for eight years, she moved to the UK seven years ago and worked for a property and investment company. Chen joined BioRegional – a partner in developing the UK`s innovative BedZED eco-community — in 2005. As Bioregional and WWF move toward building an OPL flagship community in China, Chen`s role is to talk with potential developer partners, and she has done so in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Details on OPL projects in China have not been finalised, and some non-disclosure agreements are in place. But among the four projects on the drawing board is a development for about 20,000 people at Panyu, a district of Guangzhou – possibly with an open-air opera facility. And in Shanghai, a 700-home design is being worked on, with construction to begin in the next couple of years. Another Shanghai project, as well as one in Beijing, is under discussion.

(Globally, the furthest-along OPL site is the pioneering Portuguese project, the Mata de Sesimbra eco-tourism development, meant to be the world`s first integrated sustainable building, tourism, nature conservation and reforestation programme. The 8,000-unit project, which is approaching the start of construction and could eventually house 30,000 people, is on a 5,200-hectare site south of Lisbon. A key goal is forestry redevelopment, with a return of 4,600 hectares of degraded land to native woods.)

“I think everybody knows China has very high-speed economic growth and China consumes the highest percentage of natural resources in the world,” says Chen. “When it comes to the average person, it doesn`t look like a lot, but as a whole China is using more and more resources. Now it`s come to a crisis. China needs more resources to keep up economic growth.”

“At the moment,” she adds, “China has a problem with water for northern cities and has already found out that there`s not enough energy for the big cities, electricity and other resources. It`s more urgent for the Chinese government to find a sustainable way to develop a new city. Before you develop, often you`ve found out there`s nothing left. So it`s very important to develop in a sustainable way.”

Says Chen: “The biggest environmental problems facing China are energy and water. Chinese people have a higher living standard now and are starting to consume more energy. We have a shortage of electricity and the water is not clean enough. We have a lot of water, but it`s not drinkable.”

Pollution, Chen notes, presents a serious health problem in many areas of China. “The government has policies to encourage industries to produce in an efficient way, especially in the building construction industry,” she says, “and there are new regulations saying new buildings have to be 50% more energy efficient than in the past. The problem is that, in reality, I haven`t seen anything very good in practice. There are government and university research-study projects, but they are not in the industry-mainstream practice. So we want to bring this idea into the mainstream.”

“All the developers – private, state-owned — can do it, and it doesn`t cost them more,” Chen adds. “They still get the benefit, and the people who live there get benefit, too. We want to show people that it is possible to live in a zero-carbon community and at the same time enjoy a high quality of life.”

In promoting sustainable development, OPL also advances the concept of ecological footprinting – a measure and management tool for estimating the gap between humanity`s resource demands and the planet`s biological capacity. As a planet, the earth is in ecological overshoot. From 1961 to 2000, China`s footprint has grown considerably; in net terms over those four decades, the country has moved from using about 0.8 times its domestic biocapacity to twice that amount, according to the Global Footprint Network.

“Average Chinese people are using one planet,” Chen points out. “It sounds like we`re sustainable. But if you look into the cities, the people living there are using more than average European people. For example, Shanghai is consuming more than three planets by itself, and this figure is still increasing. Shanghai is higher than European levels. Most of the population living in the countryside hardly consume any energy. So when it comes to the average, we are using one planet. But more and more people are going to live in cities.”

And as China becomes more urban, the problem increases. Cities are booming, Chen says, but growth is difficult to plan and difficult to accommodate. People in cities commute, creating greater problems in transport and other areas. Developers – with profits in mind — are copying that model, Chen says, but “the best thing is to take good experience from others, but not to copy them.”

“Our aim,” she explains, “is to use our experience to help local people to develop a zero-carbon community, and using local knowledge and local resources as much as we can.” That way, impractical and inefficient practices can be avoided. For example, Chen says: “A lot of private developments don`t put the environment issue into their projects, and also their land use in the past has not been very well organised. They have taken agricultural land to expand, to become city land. They should think more about how to use the land efficiently and keep the ecological value of the land, not destroy the existing value. And use wasteland to build their new buildings.”

Also, adds Chen, “we need to think about how to reduce carbon dioxide.” Building housing, shops and workplaces in areas where people can travel on foot or by bicycle, rather than by car, is one way. “Another issue is how to change people`s attitudes about well-being – not to have a car to show off that you`re rich. What is a good life? What is a comfortable life, a happy life? Chinese people, once they have money, first go and buy a house and a car. In the past, we`ve used bicycles a lot. This is a good aspect of our culture and people should not lose it.”

Chen is pleased that China will be hosting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, which she views as an incentive toward improving Beijing`s air quality. “We want to show good things to the outside world,” she says. “I think the Olympics will help China, in a way, to develop a green beauty, and green technology.”

In her days as a structural engineer, Chen says, Chinese developers met building standards but were not thinking very much about insulation, or how to use natural resources, or how to develop their own energy sources. “We didn`t have this kind of element in our design.” But Chen herself thought about the environmental aspects, she says, and how things could be done differently. She dreamed back then, she said, of future buildings with “an intelligent green beauty”.

Now, as OPL`s manager for China, Chen has her chance. Having last worked in the country in 1990, she is keen to be involved with developers who share her vision, and OPL`s. “I feel this is a fantastic opportunity – it`s my dream,” she says. “I`m really looking forward to seeing a real sustainable community being built in China — and we`ll show it off to the whole world.”

Maryann Bird is a London-based journalist with a special interest in environmental and human-rights issues. A writer and editor, she was previously a staff member at Time magazine (Europe), The Independent, the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.

Also about one planet living on chinadialogue: Watching a living planet

chinadialogue: In China, coal is the dominant energy source and the majority of this coal is used directly for burning. What serious environmental problems are caused by burning coal?

Weidou Ni: The distinguishing characteristics of China`s natural energy resources are abundant coal, scarce oil and a little gas, so in terms of primary energy production and consumption, coal has always held a dominant position. In 2005, China`s standard coal consumption reached 2.22 billion tonnes, standing at almost 70% of total energy consumption. In the use of this coal, 80% is directly for burning. Coal burned by coal-fired power plants accounts for over 50% of this. Over 70% of power plants on China`s electricity grid are coal-fired, while hydro, nuclear and other sources of power for electricity production account for no more than 30% of the total.

When coal burns, apart from producing a large amount of smoke and dust, it can also release the harmful substances carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbon organic matter and so forth. If there are no controls on these pollutants, they will have significant damaging effects on humans` health and environment.

At an afternoon press conference during the International Olympic Committee`s visit last summer, Hein Verbruggen, the Dutch chairman of the committee, described the city`s Olympic preparations as “stunning.” Another official said he had never, in two decades, seen such an organized plan for the Games. Even as a thick haze covered the city, Jiang Xiaoyu, the vice president of the city`s Olympic committee, explained to journalists that pollution would be brought under control, reassurances that were backed by the sanguine visiting officials. Then someone asked about the traffic.

The glow on Mr. Jiang`s face seemed to fade. Mr. Verbruggen skipped a beat before making a carefully worded assessment. “I can imagine it should be a problem for the people who have to plan for the traffic system. It’s an uphill battle for them.” He explained: “The traffic is rather busy.”

For a city that often looks more like a giant car park than a bustling metropolis, “busy” was not only an understatement, but also lacked a certain accuracy – “idle” might have been a better word. Even as Beijing scrambles to pave new roads to sustain a growing automotive yen – 1,000 new cars hit the streets daily – congestion continues to grow. And for the millions of commuters who rely on a highly-burdened subway and bus system, just getting to work can mean a daily struggle against cars, crowds and carcinogens. When Beijing slipped 10 notches to number 14 in a recent quality of life ranking of Chinese cities, bad transportation beat pollution as the biggest complaint. In July, a report by the World Bank slammed Beijing and similar cities for a “piecemeal and ad-hoc” transit planning that was not only wrecking the city`s quality of life but also clogging its economy.

Even upper-level officials – their black sedans not immune to the slow chaos of Beijing`s streets – have abandoned typical understatement. Once the threat of SARS faded in 2004, Beijing mayor Wang Qishan shifted his sights to a much more difficult target: “The contradiction between real estate development and traffic regulations is the biggest problem now facing Beijing,” he said.

If railways replaced horses and cars replaced trains, what will be the next evolutionary step after the car? Like its counterparts in north America and Asia, the European Union auto industry believes the answer is the car. Some manufacturers in Detroit still hope – against the odds – that their beloved, highly profitable sport utility vehicles will long roam the freeways as the vast, lumbering buffalo herds once did the Great Plains. But the evidence suggests that they, too, are doomed.

Technical fixes – of the sort currently being promoted – will not save the day. True, bringing hybrid technology to SUVs (as Ford did with its Escape) or fuel-cells (as General Motors and others plans to do, eventually) may improve things at the margins, for a while, but we seem to be on the verge of an intensifying series of wars over the future of mobility.

Some wars will continue to rage – over oil and other energy supplies as the global scramble for resources intensifies. But others will rage between economies, industries, value chains and corporations. Early skirmishing looks set to develop into set-piece battles as the race to develop fixes for our energy security and climate change challenges moves into top gear.

Europe`s car industry, for example, has just forced a climbdown by the European commission over proposed new emissions standards. With her colours snapping from her lance, German chancellor Angela Merkel rode out between the lines and declared that Brussels should not impose standards that would dent car-makers like BMW and DaimlerChrysler. Understandable, perhaps, but a decade from now these companies could turn out to have been industrial dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, confronted by the united legions of the car industry, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas appears to have done something of a U-turn, scaling back plans to slash car emissions linked to climate change. The original idea was that the car industry should adopt new technology that would meet a CO2 emission target of 120 grams per kilometre by 2012. Instead, Dimas is now hoping to compromise on a softer target of 130grams per kilometre. True, this would be lower than the 138 grams per kilometre target adopted by Japan for 2015, but none of this is likely to bypass accusations that the car industry has won a short-term battle at the expense of exposing Europe – and the world – to significantly greater risks from climate change.

A new coalition

All of which makes sense if you are BMW CEO Helmut Panke or DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche. But it is deeply worrying if you are familiar with the conclusions of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, or of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the first part of which was published on February 2, 2007.

One of Stern`s key conclusions is that the cost of inaction is likely to be dramatically greater than those associated with timely, effective action. If the costs of greenhouse-gas emissions are properly internalised, the market opportunities will likely run to hundreds of billions of dollars annually. No surprise, then, that some leading companies are beginning to break ranks – and even switch sides – as the evidence of climate stress builds.

An extraordinary new coalition of leading companies and NGOs, the Climate Action Partnership, has emerged in the United States. In a statement timed to break just ahead of President Bush`s 2007 state-of-the-union address and the IPCC report, it called for US regulation to limit greenhouse-gas emissions to deliver concentrations of carbon dioxide equivalent (the carbon dioxide equivalent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) which will stabilise at 450-550 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent. The current concentration of 430 ppm makes their sense of urgency understandable.

As the fight gets nastier, it was no surprise to see the US administration leaking the IPCC report – presumably to give climate sceptics time to get their defences in order. Indeed, with the Bush regime`s days numbered, climate specialists are increasingly outspoken about the ways in which it has suppressed, doctored or distorted research on climate change and its implications. But, however nasty the political end-game may become, end-game it is.

The IPCC`s predicted conclusion is that the scientific case for urgent action is hardening, suggesting that the auto and fuel industries will face a growing barrage of criticism and, more importantly, increasingly powerful regulatory and market drivers for fundamental change. The answer to at least some of tomorrow`s mobility needs could still be a car – but it may well be Chinese rather than European, a diesel-hybrid rather than petrol-powered, and owned by someone other than the driver.

There are also those who believe that one answer will be to develop new generations of electric car, like the TH!NK or the 0-60-mph-in-about-4-seconds Tesla Roadster; but for the moment the big push is towards biofuels.

It is no accident that President Bush visited DuPont the day after his state-of-the-union address, given that the chemical giant is partnering with BP to develop new generations of biofuel. And the European Union is now vigorously pushing new legislation to force oil companies to blend expensive biofuel into petrol supplies.

Unfortunately, a shift to growing fuels is not going to be any sort of magic wand. For one thing, biofuel production will compete for food crops. While the US department of agriculture has predicted that bioethanol distilleries will require 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest, the Earth Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that distilleries will need 139 million tons – more than twice as much.

If the EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the institute itself concludes: “the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before. The key questions are: How high will grain prices rise? When will the crunch come? And what will be the worldwide effect of rising food prices?”

Europeans probably won`t much like horizon-to-horizon crops of genetically modified fuel plants, while anyone who grows these crops will face an array of challenges linked to fertilisers, pesticides and water.

The false and the true

So here is our list of several fixes that are likely to be “true” fixes – and of some of those likely to be false fixes:

False (quick) fixes:

- Market fixes: be very careful of assuming that we can turn all climate issues into economic opportunity without triggering behavioural and lifestyle changes.

- Biofuels: yes, they have their place in any sensible fuels portfolio, but they will also trigger an array of economic, social and environmental concerns.

- Fertilising the oceans: some people want to seed the oceans with iron filings, to speed plankton growth and absorb more carbon. Makes sense at the test-tube level, but having destablised the atmosphere are we really happy to risk doing the same with the oceans?

- Give the planet an umbrella: if bioethanol is a boondoggle for corn growers, this one goes to the aerospace industry. The US government is calling for the IPCC to recognise the potential role of advanced technologies, including the positioning of giant solar shields in place to cut down the amount of incoming solar radiation.

True (longer term) fixes:

- Conservation: this must be the absolute number one priority. Simply changing the energy mix and attempting to find technical fixes to reducing carbon emissions must always be a second-best option.

- Regulation: voluntarism may help spur early experimentation by business, but the key will be regulation – and enforcement. This message is core to the US Climate Action Partnership agenda.

- Incentives: auto manufacturers need to be incentivised to redirect technological advance into improving fuel economy rather than performance. If congestion and other forms of road charging were widely adopted, our consumption of energy – and with it our CO2 emissions – would fall more dramatically and more quickly than chasing new technologies.

- Politics: the biggest challenge is a political challenge, requiring political will, leadership and action. We need to see more US Climate Action Partnerships, working for smarter, more effective incentives for change. If Stavros Dimas and the rest of our Cecil B DeMille cast of European commissioners can`t persuade us and move us along, maybe we need a new commission.

John Elkington is founder and chief entrepreneur at SustainAbility. He blogs here.

Geoff Lye is vice-chairman of SustainAbility, and a research fellow at Green College, Oxford.

For Chinese people, the Chinese New Year is about family gatherings, meeting up with relatives and valuing the country`s traditional culture. But often I ask myself what impact this has on the natural world.

Many people enjoy the pleasure and freedom of getting close to nature. I do not know if the earth really can speak, but I first wished I could hear it in 1998, when I went to see the autumn leaves at Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills), near Beijing. A friend took me there to enjoy the scenery, but all I saw were visitors snapping off the leaves, keeping them as souvenirs or just dropping them underfoot, leaving weeping sores on the trees.

I felt I heard nature’s lament again in 1999, during the National Day holiday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. A group of friends and I used our week-long holiday to visit Lushan, a scenic mountain spot where Mao Zedong once famously posed for a photograph. But we were surrounded by hawkers with megaphones, and had to walk into the forest to be able to hear the birdsong and the wind in the pines. I wondered why we could not hear these things back near the hawkers. A friend suggested that maybe they were making a silent protest against all the noise.

A fellow reporter told me that during the 2006 May Day holiday, 204 tonnes of rubbish was cleared from Beijing`s Tiananmen Square, with cleaners and their machinery working round the clock to keep up with the trash discarded by tourists. At the same time, 30 members of Green Earth Volunteers visited Fanjingshan, in south China`s Guizhou, as eco-tourists, where they could enjoy – and help protect – the mountain scenery.

In 1986, Fangjingshan became China’s fourth internationally-protected nature reserve, known as a treasure both for people and planet. Its environment and forest ecosystem are virtually untouched, a perfect example of China’s natural subtropical forests. It is full of rare plants, including the last survivors of a number of ancient species.

Apart from scientists attracted by its biodiversity, the rock formations on the summit are often visited by geologists. “Mushroom Rock”, formed by wind erosion, and an archway soaring over the “Golden Knife Gorge” are both majestic sights. Following the path upwards, there are numerous points to view the untouched scenery. One of these looks out to a 38-metre-high stone pillar reaching up into the sky.

Before we set off, we knew that we would have to climb almost 8,000 steps to reach these sights. But we never expected that our trip would involve another task – picking up rubbish.

Empty bottles and food wrappers were scattered among the flowers and trees. Visitors ignored nearby rubbish bins, preferring to crush the flowers under the weight of their litter. As we cleared up after them, we wondered how nature would respond, if only it could speak.

Later, we left Fanjingshan and headed for Zhenyuan, a historic town. The Wuyang River runs through it, lined with architecturally-unique buildings. Small wooden boats drifted up and down the river, and standing on its banks there was a sense of man and nature living in harmony.

But a local explained to me that the boats were, in fact, picking trash out of the river. They were not employed by the local government, but were private individuals who sold the rubbish on. And they could make a very good living, he added.

Looking out at the boats we couldn’t help but wonder what the river would look like if there were not people hauling out the trash. And if we could understand the river, what would it complain of?

Moving on to Fenghuang, Hunan province, we stayed by the Tuo River. At dusk we stood by the window, watching a gentle rain fall on the water. With the locals washing their clothes on the banks and the moon hanging bright in the sky we were reminded of the poet Zhang Ruoxu’s Spring, River, and Flowers on a Moonlit Night.

We left our wooden guesthouse for a riverside stroll, and I saw a woman who sold river tours throw her watermelon skin into the river. When I explained that the river needed to be looked after, she just told me to mind my own business, and I saw her rubbish float off downstream.

It rained the night before we left Fenghuang. The next morning we took a boat out on the river and saw plastic bottles floating past, followed by food containers and even shoes. If the river could speak, would it not river ask us why we treat it like that?

Xiangshan is known for a natural spring where one can drink fresh, sweet water. Many Beijing residents carry containers there to collect water. But they leave behind packaging from their food and drinks, which can be seen strewn around the spring, contrasting starkly with the natural beauty of the surroundings. I heard a young non-Chinese boy ask his mother if the water could clean itself when it got dirty.

I have been to southwest China`s Tiger Leaping Gorge a number of times, and enjoyed the beautiful but perilous walks along its sides. But now there is a stone bridge, and the scenery is no longer pristine. Facing this, there is a concrete toilet block, and no matter how you try to frame a photo, you cannot avoid including the toilet.

The cliff face at Xishui, in south China`s Guizhou province, has a natural fresco where the photographer Chen Fuli once stood for three days and three nights, unable to tear himself away. But a few years ago, the local government placed an electricity pylon in front of it, again leaving the scars of human activity on what once was a natural scene.

Xiangshan, Lushan, Fanjingshan, Zhenyuan, Fenghuang, Tiger Leaping Gorge: these are all just individual cases. A little bit more rubbish in our rivers and mountains; a building put here and there – perhaps it doesn’t make much difference to nature as a whole. But China has three major holidays a year, and as people get richer they increasingly use them to travel the country. And as they go out to enjoy nature, I would like them to remember: don`t base your pleasure on nature`s suffering. If you want to live in harmony with nature, you have to try to listen to what it is saying.

Yongcheng Wang is a reporter for China National Radio. Wang founded Green Earth Volunteers, a Chinese environmental NGO, in 1996. She is also a winner of the Globe Award, China’s top environmental prize.

Homepage photo by Shenxy

Described as “the world`s first long-haul budget airline”, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines could hardly have come at a better time. Profits are soaring at low-cost European favourites like Ryanair and Easyjet, the Chinese aviation market is just opening up, and demand for flights between Europe and east Asia has never been higher.

Or maybe it could not have come at a worse time. Aviation`s contribution to carbon emissions is more fully appreciated than ever before, the EU has plans to impose emissions controls on all flights under its jurisdiction, and budget airlines have become some of the worst culprits in an aviation boom that seems to fly in the face of the environmental consequences.

Still in its first months of regular service flying from London Gatwick to Hong Kong, Oasis, promising a “fresh approach to flying”, has generated an impressive amount of press for its jaw-dropping fares (advertised as %26pound;75 [US$147] each way, before tax). The lowest round-trip, all-inclusive fares found by this author came to %26pound;261 (US$513), with fares from %26pound;300 (US$589) up much more typical. At the same time, low-cost sites like Expedia and Travelocity turned up tickets on major carriers from around %26pound;390 (US$766).

And prices are expected to keep falling. If the long-haul budget market even approaches the size of, say, the European market dominated by Ryanair and Easyjet, we can expect people to fly from London to Hong Kong almost as casually as they now fly from London to Berlin.

But at the moment, the euphoria of travellers is still managing to outshine the concerns of environmentalists.

While the ecological impact of Oasis is negligible in comparison to major airlines like British Airways or (Oasis competitor) Cathay Pacific, the new airline`s launch is another indication that the budget airline model is spreading fast and that the number of flights to, from, and within China is growing exponentially.

Ryanair, in particular, has redefined our sense of the possible for budget airlines. The Irish carrier now flies 362 routes to 22 countries, recently reporting %26euro;116 million (US$150 million) in net profits this year, and contributing significantly to commercial aviation`s role in carbon-dioxide-caused climate change. There have been few efforts to curb this kind of growth%26mdash;in fact, the expansion of airports and tax breaks has fueled it.

According to Steve Miller, the airline`s CEO, Oasis has plans to follow the same trajectory, scaling up its model significantly to include destinations in the U.S. and Europe and acquire 25 airplanes.

Unlike Ryanair, whose CEO, Michael O`Leary, recently stormed against the plans of UK climate change minister Ian Pearson, Oasis takes a fairly moderate stance on the environment. Miller told me: “We are very much aware of pollution here in Hong Kong. We do take this very seriously. The most important thing we`re looking at is, just as soon as we can, going into the newest technology of aircraft. We will look at offsetting whatever [carbon emissions] we contribute, and we`ll certainly join any industry-wide initiative.”

Miller, however, did not identify any specific plans to offset the airline`s contribution to climate change. Talking about the airline`s current thinking, he said: “You contribute X amount of carbon and you plant Y trees, and we`re looking at all the options, something which is really meaningful.”

But Richard Dyer, a campaigner on aviation issues for Friends of the Earth, called the coming of long-haul budget travel “a very worrying development.”

“We can expect aviation`s climate changing emissions to grow even faster than they are already,” said Dyer. “There are no technical solutions on the horizon for decades that will radically cut aviation emissions.” So what are the best solutions for combating runaway climate change? Dyer is clear: “Abandoning plans to expand airports and introducing economic measures to manage demand.”

But for every pessimistic environmentalist, there`s an optimistic aviation executive. Steve Miller told me that outbound travel from China is poised to explode, thanks to new-found prosperity: “We are hitting this US$3,500-4,000 GDP per capita level in the Pearl River delta now, so there`s going to be a lot of stimulation [to travel] in those areas. We`re already seeing it.”

Miller said that currently: “60-70% of [Oasis`] traffic originates in the U.K since people in the U.K. are already accustomed to what we`re trying to do.” But that is likely to change soon.

Citing an estimate of some 20 million outbound trips from mainland China at present, Miller called this “the tip of the iceberg.” According to Miller`s figure, less than 2% of China`s population travels abroad each year, but for developed countries, “the generally established figure for outbound travel is 10%.”

Few would deny that increased mobility for people of varying incomes is good in and of itself; the problem is this happening against the backdrop of an airline industry that has yet to face up to its role in carbon emissions and climate change.

Cheap ticket prices are sending people one signal at the same time that concerned scientists and policy makers are trying to send another. According to a recent Oxford University report, for example, airplane emissions already account for 5.5% of total UK carbon emissions – and they are growing fast.

This is the big picture: the ceaseless expansion of airports, a predicted explosion in private aviation, and little political will to treat airlines like other polluters (which is what the new EU regulations would do, oh-so-gradually).

But at the scale of everyday life, the question is what to think about “the fresh approach” of Oasis. What difference would it make to take a stand against budget airlines when there are no “green airlines” to fly with? Is this not a case where governments – or aviation giants like Boeing, Airbus and the engine manufacturers – have to act before ordinary people can reasonably be expected to?

Ross Perlin is a graduate student at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, focusing on the documentation and description of endangered languages.

After the initial mixture of curiosity and disbelief, the nature of the challenge is remarkably divisive, swiftly splitting people into one of two camps.

Friends either sigh and look at me as a slightly cranky little eco-fundamentalist whose hairshirt notions of green self-sacrifice have led to this daftly complicated and rather inconvenient world mission. Or people’s eyes light up at the prospect of a real adventure, of travelling away from the crowd at a different pace and in a very different style.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-flying fanatic.