Part of the Project on Environmental Attitudes in China and Future Climate Change
Welcome to "Global Warming and Environmental Values in China"
It is a Website that is part of the Project on Environmental Attitudes in China and Future Climate Change, funded by the Minor Foundation for Major Challenges, Oslo.
The Website is directed at young people in China with access to the Internet. As such, it is in Chinese (both traditional and simplified script) and intended to be completely non-political. Its overall objective is to inform Chinese young people about global warming and resulting climate change, associated global impacts and the consequences for China, and their personal role in causing and mitigating the problem.
Greater China has over one-fifth of the world's population. China is developing rapidly. Although its per capita emissions of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming remain low relative to the developed world, in coming decades it is expected to overtake the United States to become the single leading national source of these pollutants. Hence, Chinese attitudes toward environmental protection and energy use have the potential to profoundly shape future changes to the Earth's climate system.
At present, environmental attitudes in China are shaped primarily by (1) tradition and culture and (2) new conceptions of economic growth and consumption. These attitudes have translated into severe environmental destruction and increasing energy use in China. If these attitudes are not altered, efforts by the Chinese government to address climate change will be ineffective. In any case, how much existing attitudes shape the behaviour of the Chinese people will profoundly influence climate, almost certainly in adverse ways.
The larger Project on Environmental Attitudes in China and Future Climate Change seeks to better understand Chinese attitudes toward the environment and their associated behaviours, and to learn from the Chinese themselves what it will take to reshape their attitudes and make their behaviour less energy-intensive and environmentally destructive. The primary goal is to maximize the benefits of reshaping human attitudes toward the environment.
The developed industrialized countries have contributed the most to the problems of global warming and climate change. But in the future the Chinese people will have the greatest impact on the Earth's climate system; no other country will have a greater influence on future climate change. Potentially understanding and shaping attitudes toward the environment in China can realize the most benefit for the future. If successful, this effort will benefit all of China and its people, as well as the rest of the world affected by global warming and climate change.
We hope that Chinese young people will be informed by the Website and will take its themes to heart. Indeed, we hope that young people around the world ¡V especially in the developed world ¡V will do more than their parents have done to protect the Earth from adverse environmental changes.
In addition to this website, the Project on Environmental Attitudes in China and Future Climate Change has produced a number of English-language reports and publications. For more information on those documents, please contact us at the following email address.
ECFP [at] LN.edu.hk
We welcome comments on the Project on Environmental Attitudes in China and Future Climate Change and especially welcome your views on the Chinese-language website.
I wish to gratefully acknowledge the help of those who contributed to this project, notably Steve Chung, who crafted much of the Website in collaboration with Tony Wong and Winnie Ng; Hongyuan Yu, who assisted with research and writing in the project; and Sarah Ho, who translated and summarized Chinese-language documents. I am especially grateful to the Minor Foundation for Major Challenges, which funded this work.
Paul G. Harris
Primary Investigator
Project on Environmental Attitudes in China and Future Climate Change
Director
Project on Environmental Change and Foreign Policy
Lingnan University
Tuen Mun
Hong Kong