Creating a common vision for green cities

Reading about the drastic budget cuts in my home state of California makes me wonder about the potential future of green cities in that state and in the United States. After months of political deadlock, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and a divided state Congress agreed on $US 30 billion in cuts over two years to schools, colleges, health, welfare, prisons, recreation and other services.

A New York Times analysis quotes University of California, Berkeley professor of political science Bruce E. Cain saying, “In the end, we do not know for sure whether the California public really wants the California dream anymore. The population is too diverse to have a common vision of what it wants to provide to everyone. Some people want the old dream, some want the gated privatized version, and some would like to secede and get away from it all.”

The conventional wisdom that California or the United States has no “common vision” reflects a political and cultural deficit, and will create more long-term damage than the economic downtown. For many government and educational authorities, diversity makes a convenient excuse for an unwillingness to invest in social programs that broadly benefit the public good. Nostalgia for previous boom times obscures the massive investment and cultural change needed to create green and sustainable cities.

China’s giant wind farms

There’s an interesting New York Times article about China’s giant wind farms. China is using state funding, low interest loans from state-owned banks, and domestic manufacturers to create six unprecedented wind farms. The scale is mammoth: 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts each, compared with the  4,000 megawatt Texas wind farm proposed by T Boone Pickens as the world’s largest, and that is now delayed.

Apparently the United States government is upset that China is using domestic suppliers who may not have the best technologist or lowest life cycle cost. I wonder if this complaint is serious. Shouldn’t any massive government investment in renewable energy be encouraged? Given the subsidies required at this early stage, do the US trade representatives or anyone else really think China would consider US and European suppliers?

Renewable energy requires huge public investment and technological innovation. Why aren’t US, European and Japanese citizens demanding that their governments invest heavily in this new clean technology? The Chinese government is showing admirable foresight in jump-starting their clean technology industry.