Chapter 29 6. Ecological Civilization: Opportunities for China

A heavy cost of our modernization drive is the deterioration of the environment.Although the international community recognizes that the global environment has gradually deteriorated since the European Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, and that the economic development and lifestyles of Western countries are mainly responsible for global warming, our own rapid development over the past 30 years has also caused many The situation of environmental problems is very serious and must be solved seriously, because it will affect the future survival and development of the Chinese nation.China also hoped to avoid the road of "pollution first, governance later" of Western industrialized countries, but later practice proved that we still have not gotten out of the vicious circle of "pollution first, governance later", which may also be a history of human understanding of the world Fate: Although there are always a few people in a society who will clearly realize that development must follow a "win-win" road of economy and ecology, it often takes a long time for the whole society to realize this, and even needs to wait until pollution When the quality of life of most people is directly threatened, everyone will have an epiphany and embark on a real road to environmental protection.This is how Western countries have come along the way, and China is unfortunately no exception.But after experiencing many environmental disasters, we finally put forward the concept of "ecological civilization", which shows that our understanding of environmental protection has taken a new leap.

With China's rapid rise, China's environmental protection has also been concerned by the world.When I meet environmental protection experts overseas, I always ask such a question: Can China's ecological deterioration be completely reversed?This is an inspiration from Deng Xiaoping's method of analyzing problems.When Deng Xiaoping made major decisions, he always firstly estimated the possible negative impact thoroughly, estimated the worst situation, and then looked at whether China could deal with it.If he can, he will make a decision.When negotiating with the British on the issue of Hong Kong's return, Deng Xiaoping considered the worst scenario: British capital would take the lead in withdrawing, and other foreign capital would follow.Deng carefully considered these possibilities, and then made a judgment: As long as our policies are correct, the funds that have flowed away will flow back, and even if these funds do not return, other funds will flow in.After thinking about this issue thoroughly, he made a final decision in front of the arrogant British Prime Minister Thatcher.Our ecological environment is very fragile now, which is related to the survival and development of our nation, so the first question we have to ask is whether China can completely reverse the passive situation of environmental degradation.

I have consulted many European environmental protection experts, and they all told me: As long as China is determined to engage in environmental protection, the current situation will definitely be reversed.They said that the environmental pollution in Europe's history was at least as serious as our current situation, but after hard work, Europe has become a very successful place for environmental protection today.The pollution in London used to be very serious. London used to be called "fog city", and the biggest crisis of "fog city" broke out in the 1950s. In December 1952, more than 4,000 people died in a soot pollution accident in London in one week. In 1953, soot pollution in London killed more than 800 people.Calculated in this way, I estimate that the pollution in London at that time could far exceed that of the most polluted city in China.The largest river in Europe, the Rhine, was once declared a dead river. A large number of creatures died and people could not swim. Therefore, I deduce that its pollution level may be no less than that of the Huaihe River and the Yellow River today.Trees are dying in Swiss forests, and red tides are blooming along Europe's North Sea coast.In the end, the Europeans learned from the painful experience and formed a consensus on environmental protection for the whole people. Both the government and the people began to seriously solve environmental problems, strictly enforced laws and enforced laws, and achieved universally recognized achievements.European environmental protection experts also believe that as long as we treat nature well and protect the environment, nature has a very strong self-healing ability, and the Rhine and Thames rivers are slowly recovering in this way.

Some people say that our population pressure is too great, and it is difficult to do environmental protection.But we can also make the worst assumption about this problem: we do have a large population, but in terms of population density and resource possessions, we are much better than Japan.Environmental pollution in Japan was also very serious in the 1960s. Minamata disease occurred, which killed more than 1,400 people in a short period of time. The declining trend of environmental degradation made Japan miraculously change from a big polluting country to a big environmental protection country.If we can learn from Japan in terms of environmental protection, and first achieve half of what Japan is doing today, I guess we can reverse the current decline in environmental protection.

In addition, we are not useless when it comes to ecological civilization.A German friend told me: Although Germany has done a good job in environmental protection, Germany’s industrial revolution and hundreds of years of internal and external wars have destroyed a large number of forests. Many of Germany’s current forests are formed by post-war afforestation. From the perspective of humanization, we are a very poor country. Many of our forests are no longer original ecological forests, and we don’t even have a single wolf. And China is still one of the countries with the richest biological species in the world.” From this, I thought: we We must make up our minds to protect our biodiversity, which is the root of our environmental ecology.Biodiversity may ultimately bring us enormous benefits that we cannot yet foresee.

I have visited Costa Rica and have some feelings about it.Costa Rica has taken a detour.From the 1950s to the 1970s, the government encouraged the deforestation of tropical rainforests and the construction of pastures to raise cattle. Because the fast food industry in the United States developed rapidly, Costa Rican beef could make a lot of money exporting to the United States.But later people here realized that the soil layer of the original rainforest is very thin, which is not suitable for agriculture and animal husbandry, and maintaining the tropical rainforest itself is to maintain biodiversity, which is of infinite value.I went to the rainforest of Costa Rica.Tropical rainforest can be seen and heard, and it feels really wonderful and fascinating.First, a sweltering wave rushes towards you, and then there are all kinds of wonderful sounds, the joyful world of birds, insects, small animals, and colorful exotic flowers, which make you feel the vitality of nature all at once.Rowing a boat, going up the river, the trees on both sides are all kinds of strange things, some trees hang upside down in the water, like root carvings.Suddenly, you saw a small simple bungalow in the distance, and a large number of cows, and the chimneys of the bungalows were still emitting smoke. At this time, you suddenly felt that human life is too close to nature. Don’t get closer, get closer, these Tropical rainforests may soon be gone, too.

Environmental and ecological issues have a certain relationship with our system and development model to a certain extent.However, to solve the problem of environmental pollution, I am afraid that we still need to rely on our system reform and innovation, rather than reinvent the wheel.The specific practices in our model can be adjusted, but some ideas behind our model, such as seeking truth from facts, people-oriented, continuous experimentation, the role of the government, etc., can still continue to guide our environmental protection work.For example, the Chinese government has decided that in order to save energy, air conditioners must not be lower than a certain degree during summer and must not be higher than a certain degree during winter. This kind of strong regulation is meaningful to the national environmental protection.We often say that the assessment indicators for cadres only look at GDP, which results in economic growth at the expense of the environment.Well, we have now begun to integrate environmental protection into the cadre assessment program, which has greatly promoted our environmental protection cause.Some people also say that if we can pay attention to environmental protection like we pay attention to family planning, we will definitely be able to solve China's environmental protection problems. This view is not unreasonable.Costa Rica is not rich, but the government has made "environmental protection and building a country" a national policy.This idea is worth learning from.Can we start experimenting with "environmental protection and provincialism" in some provinces?The evaluation of cadres there mainly uses the green index instead of GDP?

In fact, looking at it from another perspective, promoting environmental protection and building an ecological civilization is not an opportunity left to the Chinese by the world.The sharp decline in the soft power of the United States around the world is certainly related to the stupid Iraq war it launched, but it is also related to the United States’ reluctance to change its lifestyle of putting personal freedom first and wealth consumption first.In Europe, people can only shake their heads when it comes to America's super wasteful energy and environmental policies.But Europe also has its own big problems: Although Europe is at the forefront of the world in many aspects such as environmental protection awareness and technological innovation, Europe is already dominated by developed countries, and its per capita greenhouse gas emissions are much higher than those of developing countries. Cycling has become commonplace in some countries, but in most southern European countries, each family still owns or aspires to own two cars.From this perspective, history seems to have given the Chinese an opportunity: Can a China that has not yet completed its modernization transformation directly transform from the current traditional industrial civilization to an ecological industrial civilization?This means that we must strive to achieve a win-win situation between ecological protection and economic development, we must bid farewell to the industrialization path that the United States and Europe have gone through, and we must embrace a healthier and more environmentally friendly way of life.This is a serious challenge for us, but also a rare opportunity.

First, it is in China's own interest to do so.Our environment can no longer support high-pollution, high-energy consumption, and low-efficiency production methods.China has few resources per capita, and its ecological environment is already highly fragile. Environmental pollution has endangered the physical and mental health of its citizens, endangered social harmony and stability, and endangered the well-being of our children and grandchildren.Mr. Pan Yue said that there are two accounts to be calculated, which is very reasonable: one is to calculate the economic, social, political and health costs we have to pay if we continue on the road of traditional industrial civilization?The second is to take the road of circular economy, green production and consumption, and ecological industrial civilization of renewable energy. How much is the cost, risk, and benefit of this transformation.Once this account is settled, we can promote ecological civilization even more without hesitation.

In this regard, the most thorough consideration is probably Israel.The Israeli government has decided to vigorously develop electric vehicles and solar energy.According to the "Financial Times" report, Israel plans to use solar power stations to supply electricity, use electric vehicles throughout the country, and build 50,000 solar car battery charging stations across the country.Israel's President Peres said: "Solar energy is democratic, anyone can use it, it is inexhaustible, and it is inexhaustible. Within a few years, our oil imports can be reduced by half, and within 10 years we can completely eliminate the need for imported oil. The two major problems of the country: oil is the largest source of pollution and the largest sponsor of terrorism (almost all oil-producing countries are Israel’s enemies).” Israel has about 2 million motor vehicles, and Israel plans to invest 5 billion U.S. dollars to build a large-scale Solar power stations to address the electricity needs of these cars.Whether this plan can be finally realized is still difficult to determine.If we put aside the political factor of the Israeli-Arab conflict and look at this idea objectively, we have to admit that this is a bold and forward-looking idea, which is worth learning from.

Second, environmental protection has rich cultural connotations.Awareness of environmental protection reflects personal cultivation, but also reflects the cultural level of a nation.When a person eats fruit and throws the peel into the trash can instead of throwing it on the road, it reflects the cultural quality of the person.When a family patiently separates garbage into different bins, it is a cultural enhancement of the family.Environmental protection can make our nation form a more refined and tasteful way of life.Now few people in Europe wear fur coats, because wearing them out is tantamount to going against the mainstream culture of protecting endangered wild animals.Now a new culture is beginning to emerge in Sweden and other countries: it is a shame to drive a big gas-guzzling car, and it is fashionable to drive an environmentally friendly car or even ride a bicycle.France's environmental protection propaganda is relatively flexible. Every home will receive a gas notice, telling you that every degree of heating reduction can save you money and contribute to the mitigation of global warming.If we can also form this kind of environmental protection culture and fashion, it will also be a kind of cultural improvement for our society that seems to be too particular about material life.In terms of environmental protection, we should also be able to go ahead of the United States.If we can take environmental protection as an opportunity to promote a personalized and tasteful environmentally friendly lifestyle, it will help to transform our current social atmosphere of advocating luxury and help improve the cultural accomplishment and quality of our entire nation.When I was visiting Chile, a local scholar said to me: "Chile's national anthem is beautiful, and there is a line like this in it: 'Chile, pure blue sky, happy Eden decorated with flowers', but it is very beautiful. Unfortunately, if the global climate continues to warm, the Antarctic glaciers will melt, and the lyrics of our national anthem will also be changed to 'Paradise Lost Without Flowers'." She said to me again: "Seeing the melting of Antarctic glaciers, you know that I How do you feel? It’s like you saw the collapse of the Great Wall.” Her words touched me, and I hope that our people also have such strong environmental protection feelings. Third, the construction of ecological civilization can also become an entry point and a test field for orderly political reform.Environmental protection is inseparable from democratic participation. Only when the whole people participate consciously and extensively can we do a good job in environmental protection.Environmental protection is also a cause that needs to be jointly promoted by the government and the people.We can try to promote citizens' political participation in the field of environmental protection, implement the rule of law, implement information disclosure, promote democratic decision-making and public opinion supervision, and carry out self-management of citizens' lives, etc.This reform experiment is less risky and has a greater chance of success.The experience and lessons accumulated in this process will be of inspiration and reference for the future political reform of the whole country. Fourth, environmental protection is also very popular.Now the international community has reached a consensus that the construction of ecological civilization can promote the transformation of traditional industries, and can also give birth to many new industries and create new economic growth points.For example, the recycling and utilization of old steel is an industry. According to reports, the recycling rate of scrap steel in Germany has reached 80%, that of the Netherlands is 78%, and that of China is about 20%.Renewable energy is an emerging industry, and Denmark's wind power generation has accounted for 20% of the country's total power generation.Although the proportion of solar energy and wind energy in the world's total energy is less than 2%, the growth rate is very fast, and China cannot lag behind in this regard.If China's self-produced environmentally friendly and energy-saving vehicles can occupy the vast Chinese market and enter the European and American markets in the future, this itself contains endless business opportunities. Fifth, the construction of ecological civilization is another test of China's development model.As latecomers to the cause of modernization, we should do better than the West, and should be able to bring some new surprises to the world.If we can creatively transfer many successful ideas and practices accumulated during the reform and opening up to the construction of ecological civilization, this will not only better promote our environmental protection cause, but also drive China's political, economic, cultural, social and other aspects. progress.The Chinese model and the values ​​and soft power it represents will also have a greater impact on the world. For the survival and development of the Chinese nation, for a more harmonious world, and for our own clear water, blue sky, white clouds and good mood, we should seize this opportunity, change from passive to active, and take the road of ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics without hesitation. road, and finally appeared on the world stage as a big and powerful environmental protection country.