Here below is an excerpt from ChinaDialogue editor Isabel Hilton’s interview with Nobel winning Al Gore about China and India:
IH: There are people, of course, who say, “What’s the point of acting, as long as China and India are not constrained to act?”
AG: Well, the truth is that China and India will have to be a part of the solution. But the way to get them to join in solving the crisis is for us to go first and to take the actions that the UK is beginning to take and that I hope the United States will begin to take. Secondly, China and India are sometimes stereotyped unfairly. The truth is they know, or many of their leaders and scientists know full well, how much they have to lose if this climate crisis is not checked.
Twenty million people around Beijing would have to relocate, 40 million people around Shanghai, 60 million people around Calcutta, millions more in other coastal cities. The Yellow River is now sometimes without water, partly because the source of the Yellow — and the Yangtze and the other great rivers of Asia — is in the ice fields of the Tibetan plateau. And they’re melting, more rapidly than the rest of the glaciers. These and other consequences have caught their attention. They have their own equities involved here. So I don’t think it’s right to just assume that they’re not going to care about solving this crisis. [Full Text]
[Image: Al Gore, via ChinaDialogue.net]
