As expected, Climate Change is taking center stage under the
Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made it a top
priority on her recent Asia trip. For
all of us in the Greenhouse Gas software space, this is good news.
Accompanied by her top climate change envoy, Todd Stern,
Clinton raised the issue at every point in her tour of Japan, South Korea,
Indonesia and China. During her final stop in Beijing she toured a cogeneration
plant built with high-efficiency gas turbine technology from General Electric
Co. and urged China not to make the "same mistakes" as the United
States in producing rampant emissions of greenhouse gases.
"We were industrializing and growing. We didn't know
any better. Neither did Europe," Clinton said during her visit to the
Taiyang Gong plant. "Now we are smart enough to figure out how to have the
right kind of growth, sustainable growth, and clean energy-driven growth."
In my opinion, these comments were right on target – exactly
what she needed to say to get them to think about making changes. Plus, it puts
U.S. companies on notice that they will also be a part of the solution. The
time to act is now.
Clinton said the Obama administration wants to see economic
growth continue in China. But she also noted that the two nations produce 40
percent of the world's heat-trapping gas emissions.
Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution and co-author of a new blueprint on how to bring China and the
United States into cooperation on climate change, said he thinks Clinton sent a
powerful signal that was "fundamentally different" from the one sent
by the Bush administration over the past eight years.
"Climate change is one of these existential threats
that the U.S. and other countries face, and we do not have the luxury of
procrastinating anymore. I think that's the message that Hillary Clinton
brought to China," Lieberthal said.
The United States and China will meet again in April…the
next questions then become “What do we expect from them? And… how can we engage
them to best solve the problem together?
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