In this podcast interview, Mark L. Clifford discusses his book, The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency, with National Committee President Stephen Orlins, highlighting the success China has had in bringing down the cost of renewable power, its government and industries working together with forward-looking policies and business practices to invest in cost-competitive green energy initiatives and making great strides particularly in wind and solar power.
In the months leading up to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, China began making a series of pledges to overhaul its environmental and energy policies. To curb emissions, it announced the creation of a cap-and-trade program, restrictions on domestic coal production, and investment in renewable energy. At the Paris conference, China’s top climate negotiator expressed confidence in the measures and policies China was putting into place.
However, questions remain as to whether China’s new approach will be sufficient to curb global climate change. Despite being the world’s largest investor in green energy, China is still the world’s largest producer of greenhouses gases. Furthermore, recent allegations that China has been underreporting carbon emissions have cast doubt on China’s ability to meet its international environmental commitments.
On April 5, 2016, Mark L. Clifford, author of The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency, drew upon his latest research to outline the global and domestic context of the energy and environmental policies that China has further embraced since the 2015 Paris Climate Conference in a conversation with the National Committee in New York City.
Mark L. Clifford is the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council. Previously he was editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard, and the Asia regional editor for BusinessWeek. Mr. Clifford moved to Asia in 1987 as the Seoul correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and later served as the magazine’s business editor in Hong Kong. In addition to the Asia Business Council’s books on young Asians (Through the Eyes of Tiger Cubs: Views of Asia’s Next Generation) and on green buildings (Building Energy Efficiency: Why Green Buildings Are Key to Asia’s Future), Mr. Clifford is co-author, with former WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, of China and the WTO: Changing China, Changing World Trade; the co-author of Meltdown: Asia’s Boom, Bust and Beyond; and the author of Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea. He graduated in history (honors) from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and chairman of the editorial board of the Asian Review of Books. He has lived in Hong Kong since 1992.