Reflection on the Wednesday Evening Talk ““US-China Environmental Policy, Reversing Roles?: Environmental Politics and Policy in China and the US”

I went to the talk on Wednesday 18th October. It was “US-China Environmental Policy, Reversing Roles?: Environmental Politics and Policy in China and the US.” The talk is given by Robert Gottlieb, a writer, and editor who has spent several decades working as an editor in different agencies including The New Yorker.
Before I discussed the event and my reflection, I have pointed out that this event was no really carefully organized. The organizer changed the location of the talk, and the New School faculty who was supposed to introduce Robert didn’t show up. This kind of chaos, few audiences because of the location change, and the absence of detailed introduction to Robert led me to think he was just someone not that great(Aha, but I realized it’s not true after I did some research on him).
The talk is straightforward, beginning with him introducing his new book Global Cities co-written with Simon Ng (a writer from Hong Kong). This book discussed the current environmental situation in China and United States by giving a detailed comparison on different aspects of two respective port cities Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
Robert talked about the recent changes in environmental policy made by United States government before and after Trump. He started with the air and water pollution that happened at California like 30 years ago, and during Obama how the US government strive to join the cooperation at Paris and how Obama has pushed for the positive environmental policies like promoting greener energy. The food and agriculture system has always been industrialized in the United States. However since Trump, US exit from the cooperation with other major countries on climate change. And Trump stands for the climate denier who deny there is no climate change and the incoming threat come with it. And those deniers celebrate the use of fossil fuel, rather than promoting green energy.
Though China has a late awareness of dealing with environmental protection, China made good progress on building a framework. And it’s going to give the first place of having the most chemical use in agriculture in the world to the US in the coming years. And because the suffering started like ten years ago like severe air or water pollution, China’s policy reacted quickly and was executed at an amazing speed because of the China’s central government structure where after the big decision was made there will be a less democratic process to go through. And China now plays a leading role in the global cooperation dealing with climate change, and it had the promise to give zero emission from fossil fuel cars at 2035.
The interesting thing is he made the comparison between the policies of US and China. While US’s policy is struggling with the state and local resistance, China’s local government is going well with implementation using a fast speed as the environmental improvement is counted as part of the local government’s performance. And the environmental action in the United States work at the blow in the political structure; it’s more like the organizations or local office are doing these jobs. But in China, it is from the top of the government. Local office listens to the order and executes it.
The content of the talk is inspiring. You can tell how much work has been put into the research. And it’s a bit obscure because Robert talks more about the policies. I mean, this is abstract.But to me, there is still something that is inspiring. In the comparison he made between Hong Kong and LA, he put the difference and commons into different categories based on the systems related to the city’s development: water, earth, transportation, living space, air. It is so related to what I’ve learned in this class. And it is worthy to think about these related systems when making design choices.