Well, I’m about to visit China for 16 days, visiting Universities in Guangzhou, Xiamen, Bejing, Xi’an, Lanzhou, Harbin and Jinan (see clickable map for locations). It’s part of a delegation from the University of Adelaide to foster research cross-collaborations between Australian and Chinese universities, and to encourage talented China Scholarship Council Research students to study for their PhDs in Australia (Adelaide!). I’ll also be giving plenty of talks on climate change and sustainability and its relevance to China.
It should be an exciting trip – because it is such a magnificent and diverse country – and also because it will give me a chance to witness, first hand what a decade of sustained, 8-11% pa economic growth looks like in reality.
China is pushing ahead fast on all development fronts, from emissions of greenhouse gases from their coal-fired power stations to large scale initiatives in renewable energy – literally, the good, the bad and the ugly.
The historical legacy of climate change sits squarely with the developed world, but the future course of climate change will be largely determined by whether nations such as China can quickly convert their energy supply to cleantech. That will be where a global agreement in terms of tech development and transfer will be crucial.
Anyway, I hope to be able to post regularly to the blog when I’m travelling, provided I can hook up to the internet from time to time. Indeed, China will be an apt place from which to post my next entry in the ‘How much warming is in the pipeline’ series, because a lot of the answer lies in that atmospheric brown cloud you can see in the picture at the top of this blog entry.
Stay tuned!
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