If there is one thing that continually bothers me, it is when people (leaders in particular) selectively cherry pick a few data points and come up with a broad stroke ASSessment of what is occurring on the ground. It is of course a global phenomenon, but in the realm of green, carbon, and rhetoric, there is a huge amount of this occuring whenever someone involves China.

… and in a recent speach at teh U.N. Al Gore praised China and Japan on their climate leadership, saying:

“I think that China has provided impressive leadership,” Gore told reporters.

Predicting that China would take further action if global negotiations on a new treaty succeed, Gore said: “I think the glass is very much half full with China.

“It’s not widely known in the rest of the world but China in each of the last two years has planted two and half times more trees than the entire rest of the world put together,” he said.

A quote that is borderline ridiculous, and shows how far we have to go in developing a real understanding of what this is all about.

Yes, China has planted mor trees than anyone (don’t forget why they had to), and yes, they have invested more money in wind farms and solar fields than anyone this year, but does that give them “leadership” status? Is that what it takes? Or, perhaps should we take a more holistic look at this?

Before I go on though, I would like to say that I have witnessed an amazing amount of change in China in my time here, and the people behind that rightly deserve credit for the wrk they have done. Investments and planning are being made in a way that I see long term positive returns, and my gut feeling is that there are going to be many more positive steps to be made.

However, while the leadership may be “leading” in certain sectors investment,they are certainly lagging in many other areas: Wildlife protection, water management, food security and contamination, air pollution, energy efficiency (not intensity.. efficiency), environmental awareness, citizen participation, enforcement of environmental laws, and so on.

Areas far more important than the investments made in clean technologies, especially of those technologies are not connected to the grid, or are burning out within months of being installed.. and were I Spain or Germany, I would also hav ea bone to pick about China’s “leadership” on energy supply. After all, they have been installing renewable energies into their grid on a percentage that China cannot match (regardless of gross amount), so does that make them the “leaders”?

It is a situation that bothers me not because someone is a leader, but because it is clear that no one is really “leading” if you look at the entire picture…

At the end of the day, and where I am going to end my post, is that for us to make real progress and give a credible amount of credit, the picture needs to be looked at holistically. There has been a lot of progress in many areas of the world, and in many areas of sustainability, but we need to stop patting each other on the back like this because at the end of the day even China admits that it is not doing enough to stop the world’s temperatures from rising another 2 degrees.

… and if that happens, the only winners in that scenario are the cockroaches.