Doom and Gloom or Solving Problems?

Hello all! This is Katie Ort posting from Kristi’s account.

One of the challenges of being in Beijing is working with the technology, so we have to be creative sometimes. Here are some highlights from day 2:

Hello from Beijing! Our second full day here was quite eventful as we had a lecture from Professor Jia Xing about the air pollution problem here in China. He told us about how hard China is working to combat the pollution problem and is trying to do what the US managed to accomplish in 20 years in only 5 years! China sees the pollution problem as an important goal, for the health of its people, the planet, and to show the people that they can have faith in their government to solve these important problems. The government is putting a lot of resources into understanding this problem and finding a fix. The Environmental Protection Agency in China has a lot of power in implementing environmental policy, and there are strict consequences for violating regulations.

After our lecture we were able to tour some of the labs in Tsinghua and see some of the work being done in China at the School of the Environment. We saw different labs that were working on various projects sampling air and water quality. We also got to see the Tsinghua X-lab, which is a learning platform for students to connect them with resources, mentors, and advice to achieve their career goals.

Seeing all of the different things that China is doing to combat air pollution and to meet their climate change goals is very encouraging. In Environmental Studies you hear a lot about the perils of climate change, and it can seem like a lot of doom and gloom in the news. Seeing these people working on real projects to make real change gives me a lot of hope for the future of our planet. We were told that this is the cleanest the air in Beijing has been in quite a long time! Perhaps we were just lucky, but maybe this is also a sign of progress here in China.