On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules

In the book Hot, Flat & Crowded, one of the author Tom Friedman's focus is on China and green energy.  This is a great approach to what many people including Friedman wants: the greener world and industries.

CHANGSHA, China — Until very recently, Hunan Province was known mainly for lip-searing spicy food, smoggy cities and destitute pig farmers. Mao was born in a village on the outskirts of Changsha, the provincial capital here in south-central China. 

Now, Changsha and two adjacent cities are emerging as a center of clean energy manufacturing. They are churning out solar panels for the American and European markets, developing new equipment to manufacture the panels and branching into turbines that generate electricity from wind. By contrast, clean energy companies in the United States and Europe are struggling. Some have started cutting jobs and moving operations to China in ventures with local partners. 

According to the article, Changsha used to have a "smoggy" stratosphere. Now Changsha, or China is changing. The big red country of manufacturing and monster factories are slowly becoming more friendly with the whole earth. At this rate, China might catch up with U.S. and out run the green energy race. I am eager to see China reforming their cities to be more green. Because it is China, that would be a great, big step to the greener earth and world economy.

Greener Facebook?

In Thomas L. Friedman's writting, Hot, Flat and Crowded, He scolds pollution and demands better environment for our future generation. This is another unique approach to his wish.

Environmental activist organization Greenpeace just won’t get off Facebook’s case for planning to invest in a data center facility that happens to be powered by “dirty coal-fired electricity.” The latest development is that the Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo has sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to reconsider its planned facility in Prineville, Oregon, which uses power from Pacific Power. As evidence that Facebook SHOULD be interested in this issue, Naidoo points to the Facebook: Unfriend Coal page, which actually has close to 600,000 followers right now. Greenpeace appears to be wanting to guilt Facebook into reconsidering its position by pointing to what other huge forces in cloud computing are doing right:

“Other cloud-based companies face similar choices and challenges as you do in building data centers, yet many are making smarter and cleaner investments. Google, for instance, entered into a long-term agreement with a large wind power producer earlier this month. It has demonstrated that it is not only possible to prioritize the purchase of clean energy, but prudent as well.”

Facebook is something that symbolizes our flat world. If you have a computer and internet connection, talking to anybody in the world is no problem. Facebookis one of the cloud-based companies, very popular, having more than 500 million users. Facebook using a dirty coal electricity is in fact shocking and unexpected since the main trend of the day is "eco-friendly". If Facebook goes by Greenpeace's suggestion, this would be a great advance, knowing that Facebook is a huge company.