Shooting the Breeze about #chinaEARTHusa

The conventional wisdom seems to be that, when they meet in Southern California in the days ahead, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping will talk about "economic rivalry, mounting cybersecurity threats to U.S. businesses, an assertive Chinese nationalism and an expanded American military presence in the Asia-Pacific region."

But why not just shoot the breeze instead?

San Gorgino Pass Wind Farm

After all, they will be meeting near one of the most breathtaking monuments to humankind's determination to break free of fossil fuels -- the San Gorgino Pass Wind Farm near Palm Springs, California.

The fate of the earth is in the balance, and the U.S. and China need to start talking about a radical program to cut fossil fuel consumption.

To paraphrase Bill McKibben, a few cyberattacks here and there isn't the end of the world. The end of the world is the end of the world!

MORE: #chinaEARTHusa


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It has been announced that China and the U.S. will hold a top leadership meeting at the beginning of June. If the past is any indication, we will get a lot of cautious, lukewarm pronouncements about cooperation that don't begin to address the reality. It's time for activists in the U.S. and China to join hands and start to militate for radical change. We need a zero-carbon USA and a zero-carbon China. Anything less is planetocide.

(See #chinaEARTHusa - Radical Change? or Planetocide? )

If the leaders of China and the United States are together in California, what they really ought to be doing is getting out into nature. Leave the briefing books behind, ditch the talking points, and get into the real world. Both of our countries are natural wonders from one end to the other, and California, in particular, is a place that begs to be experienced as a showcase of nature. Maybe some shared exploration of the natural world would jog some thinking about our the shared environmental challenges we face.

(See Obama and Xi: Get to the Point! )


It's not immediately obvious how Chicago and Illinois can move quickly to get electricity in a zero-carbon manner.  But here are a few initial thoughts . . . and wind is part of the answer . . . .


(See What If Chicago Started to "Think Different" About Electricity? on the Zero Carbon Chicago website)