I’m not as concerned about China taking the lead in the green movement as others. Currently the only way to bring items to market is to subsidize them. So I guess China will use the peoples money to fund green projects that probably will do nothing to help the environment. China is also creating a government body to help the movement? Let’s look at our great government own Energy dept. created back in the 70′s. It mission was to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. At the time we imported 30% now we import 70% just another example of a failed government policy.

I’m the first to protest polluting the planet but to think we actually can have meaningful impact on other issue really? Talk about planet changes, go look at the tectonic plate movement in the last 75 million years, mother nature has control not us!

Has anybody read the cap and trade proposed legislation? Just what we need more gov. in our life, every time they pass a new law they reduce our freedoms, for me I not for it. I wish we could go back to the America our founding fathers created not the one we live in today.

http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/01/students_join_green_economy

Student green innovators can help lead initiatives.

Here is one of these grass roots efforts: http://www.nextbrightidea.com

There is a lot less worry about sustainability when poverty , death and destruction dominate the headlines.

Ultimately, sustainability is a challenge of the human spirit, for where there is a will….

The rise of other countries, most notably India and China, while certainly presenting challenges, is certainly a better outcome for all the world, and even for the US, than alternatives of warlords and poverty.

There is certainly no shortage threats all around, but as always there are opportunities as well, they are two sides of the same coin.
Nobody has a monopoly on threats or opportunities but it is much easier emotionally and intellectually to think in the jingoistic terms of ‘barbarians at the gate’.

We are all subject to the ever quickening pace of change that is increasingly becoming a destabilizing force. NOBODY is immune and nobody has all the answers.

“China [et al]’s rise does not have to come at our demise” (thanks Tom). We need each other. Young and old , China and the world and the US.

Thus we’d do well to follow Kipling’s advice and “ keep our heads when those about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”

These are certainly defining times, several defining moments are looming. But chief among these is whether we proceed thru cooperation and collaboration … or find competition and conflict our only or best used tools.

Getting the mix right will be less of a challenge if as you say we get much better at listening.
This is not apt to be zero sum game. We can (in fact we must) learn from each other. Collaborate or die is likely to be the new watchword.

I’m convinced that where energy and sustainability are concerned there is no shortage of room to cooperate and collaborate and that this is the key to the challenge of the human spirit.