November 2007 my imagining global asia colleagues and I organized a lecture with a Japenese engineer discussing web 3.0. After the lecture I was speaking with a woman about my interest in Chinese environmentalism. She told me that I should contact Jennifer Turner, the director of the Energy Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Afterwards I sent Jennifer Turner an email. November of 2008 I took a Chinatown bus to Washington, D.C. and met with Jennifer Turner. She told me about the work of Energy Foundation, and that I should meet with them. In 2009 I flew to San Francisco to visit Energy Foundation. I met with a woman for the first time at Energy Foundation. I learned that Energy Foundation gives support to a lot of Chinese initiatives, Jennifer Wilson was right. Now she works for Pacific Environment. This year she was travelling in China for three weeks, seeing the polluted rivers of Northeast China and the organic farm named QQ in Anhui Province.
Now a lot of people are in Copenhagen discussing climate, scientists, government officials, activists, etc. Although this issue is very important, I infrequently read news related to Copenhagen. It seems that many American citizens believe their lives and Copenhagen do not have any connection. Probably Chinese citizens also think the same. In the United States and China citizens experience themselves climate change. For example New York city doesn't snow, but in Seattle it snows a lot. Now in China a lot of people have agriculture problems.
Developing country leaders say that developed countries should give developing countries funds (for climate change). If developed countries gave developing countries funds, its difficult to say what the impact on the lives of developing countries' citizens would be. Now China busy a lot of American treasury bonds, otherwise the American government's funds would not be sufficient. In the United States 15 million citizens are unable to find work. Probably they are not interested in Copenhagen. Probably a lot of them have a lot of debt, they don't understand why the United States should give funds to other countries for climate change. There is still a problem, American citizens may or may not be need to address climate change, might only need the government officials in Copenhagen.
Last week I met an old classmate in a New York park. Because there were no public restrooms in the park, I noticed a man in front of us use a cup. I'm assuming this man was homeless and I don't think my classmate noticed, in part because the man put the cup inside his pants.
September 4th the New York Times wrote about corruption in China, August 28th Bruce Nussbaum wrote about legal corruption in the United States. In Physics, objects at rest like to stay at rest and objects in motion like to stay in motion. I wonder if the Chinese people see their country in motion while Americans see their country at rest.
我问谁是翻译者？
The past year I have been learning how to speak and write Chinese (Mandarin), the last two months of which in Beijing. Studying Chinese has been a means to better understand how Americans and Chinese are trying to tackle the energy challenges of climate change. A recent blog entry by Aimee Barnes cites that 50,000 Americans are currently learning how to speak Chinese. But I and maybe others cannot speak or understand Chinese well. A question for me is, who are the translators? How do you know what you know about China, Japan or Germany?
