本帖最后由 渔音谦谦 于 2010-1-20 17:12 编辑
【中文标题】谁在沉睡？
【原文标题】Who's sleeping now?
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10friedman.html
【原文作者】THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
C. H. Tung, the first Chinese-appointed chief executive of Hong Kong after the handover in 1997, offered me a three-sentence summary the other day of China’s modern economic history: “China was asleep during the Industrial Revolution. She was just waking during the Information Technology Revolution. She intends to participate fully in the Green Revolution.”
I’ll say. Being in China right now I am more convinced than ever that when historians look back at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, they will say that the most important thing to happen was not the Great Recession, but China’s Green Leap Forward. The Beijing leadership clearly understands that the E.T. — Energy Technology — revolution is both a necessity and an opportunity, and they do not intend to miss it.
We, by contrast, intend to fix Afghanistan. Have a nice day.
O.K., that was a cheap shot. But here’s one that isn’t: Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, liked to say that companies come to “strategic inflection points,” where the fundamentals of a business change and they either make the hard decision to invest in a down cycle and take a more promising trajectory or do nothing and wither. The same is true for countries.
The U.S. is at just such a strategic inflection point. We are either going to put in place a price on carbon and the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China’s main competitor/partner in the E.T. revolution, or we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it.
Is President Obama going to finish health care and then put aside the pending energy legislation — and carbon pricing — that Congress has already passed in order to get through the midterms without Republicans screaming “new taxes?” Or is he going to seize this moment before the midterms — possibly his last window to put together a majority in the Senate, including some Republicans, for a price on carbon — and put in place a real U.S. engine for clean energy innovation and energy security?
I’ve been stunned to learn about the sheer volume of wind, solar, mass transit, nuclear and more efficient coal-burning projects that have sprouted in China in just the last year.
Here’s e-mail from Bill Gross, who runs eSolar, a promising California solar-thermal start-up: On Saturday, in Beijing, said Gross, he announced “the biggest solar-thermal deal ever. It’s a 2 gigawatt, $5 billion deal to build plants in China using our California-based technology. China is being even more aggressive than the U.S. We applied for a [U.S. Department of Energy] loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico, and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is ready to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!”
Yes, climate change is a concern for Beijing, but more immediately China’s leaders know that their country is in the midst of the biggest migration of people from the countryside to urban centers in the history of mankind. This is creating a surge in energy demand, which China is determined to meet with cleaner, homegrown sources so that its future economy will be less vulnerable to supply shocks and so it doesn’t pollute itself to death.
In the last year alone, so many new solar panel makers emerged in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents, according to The Times’s bureau chief here, Keith Bradsher. Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour — from Wuhan to Guangzhou. As Bradsher noted, China “has nearly finished the construction of a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in just five hours, compared with 12 hours today. By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.”
China is also engaged in the world’s most rapid expansion of nuclear power. It is expected to build some 50 new nuclear reactors by 2020; the rest of the world combined might build 15.
“By the end of this decade, China will be dominating global production of the whole range of power equipment,” said Andrew Brandler, the C.E.O. of the CLP Group, Hong Kong’s largest power utility.
In the process, China is going to make clean power technologies cheaper for itself and everyone else. But even Chinese experts will tell you that it will all happen faster and more effectively if China and America work together — with the U.S. specializing in energy research and innovation, at which China is still weak, as well as in venture investing and servicing of new clean technologies, and with China specializing in mass production.
This is a strategic inflection point. It is clear that if we, America, care about our energy security, economic strength and environmental quality we need to put in place a long-term carbon price that stimulates and rewards clean power innovation. We can’t afford to be asleep with an invigorated China wide awake.
香港在1997年后第一任由中国任命的特首董建华，有一天和我分享了高度概括中国现代经济史的三句话：“工业革命时期的中国正在沉睡。信息革命的时期她刚刚睡醒。绿色革命是她要全面参与的。”
我要说，身处中国，我比以往更加切身地体会到了以下这种说法。历史学家们在回顾21世纪第一个十年的时候，会说中国发生的最重要的事情并不是经济衰退，而是中国的绿色大跃进。北京的领导人清楚地意识到，能源科技革命既是必要的又是一个机会，他们不想错过。
而我们呢？正相反，在搞阿富汗。祝你愉快……
好的，就算我们是在偷袭阿富汗，可下面这件事并不是偷袭：英特尔的创始人之一Andy Grove说，公司的命运已经到了一个“战略转折点”。在商业运作的根基已经发生变化的时候，他们要么在衰退期做出艰难的投资决定，创造一个令人振奋的上升曲线，要么坐以待毙。对国家来讲，情况也是一样。
美国也正处于这样的一个战略转折点。我们必须采取经济手段限制碳的使用量，并且执行相关的刺激政策来确保美国在能源科技革命方面与中国形成主要的竞争对手和合作伙伴关系。否则，我们将会逐渐地把这项产业割让给北京，同时拱手送出的还有良好的就业机会和能源的安全保障。
奥巴马总统在完成健康法案之后，是否依然要把国会已经通过的能源和碳收费法案搁置在一边？国会已经通过了这项法案，不过目的仅仅是为了能过和平地度过中期选举，而不至于让共和党人尖叫“新税种”。或者，他是否想在中期选举之前抓住这个机会，让美国真正开始启动清洁能源革命和能源安全的引擎？这或许是他最后一次整合议会，包括一些共和党人，来对碳排放收费的机会了。
仅仅在去年一年里，中国各地出现的风能、太阳能、大规模运输、核能和高效的燃煤项目数量之巨，已经让我目瞪口呆了。
这里有一封来自Bill Gross的电子邮件，他在加利福尼亚创立了eSolar，一家太阳热能公司。Gross说，他在北京宣布“谈成了一笔最大的太阳热能交易。这是一笔价值50亿美元、利用加利福尼亚的技术在中国建造两个千兆瓦特电厂的项目。中国要比美国更加积极。我们曾经为一个新墨西哥的92百万瓦特项目申请过‘美国能源贷款’，可是在中国，在不到这个申请第一步的一半的时间里，中国已经完成了批准、签字的工作，并且已经准备好开始在今年建设这个比新墨西哥大20倍的项目。”
没错，环境变化是北京关注的一个问题。但是，中国的领导人更加迫切地认识到，他们的国家正处于人类历史上最大规模的从乡村到城市的迁徙当中。这将会因为能源需求的高涨，中国决心使用更加清洁的、本地供应的资源来满足这种需求。这样，将来的经济比较不会受到供应短缺的影响，也不会让自己在污染中灭亡。
仅仅在去年，中国出现了大量的新型太阳能板制造商，使得太阳能发电的价格从59美分一千瓦时降低到16美分，这个数据来自纽约时报的总编辑Keith Bradsher。与此同时，中国在上周试运行了世界上速度最快的子弹头列车——时速217英里，从武汉到广州。正如Bradsher所说，中国“已经基本完成了造价235亿美元的从北京到上海的高速铁路。这条路线全长700英里，相比于现在的12个小时，列车运行全程将只需要5个小时。而美铁至少需要18个小时来走完纽约到芝加哥之间类似的距离。”
中国还将进行世界上最大规模的核能扩展项目，它计划在2020年之前修建50个核反应堆。而世界其它所有国家加起来的发展计划也不过是15个。
香港最大的发电设备制造公司CLP集团的首席执行官Andrew Brandler说：“到下一个十年结束的时候，中国将主导全球各种类型的发电设备制造过程。”
在这个过程中，中国将为自己和每一个人提供更加便宜的清洁能源技术。但是，中国的专家依然会告诉你，如果中国和美国可以更加紧密地合作，这一切都会更快、更有效率地实现。美国在能源研究和创新方面的优势，恰恰是中国的劣势。美国擅长风险投资和为新科技提供辅助性支持，而中国擅长大规模制造业。
这正是一个战略性的转折点。很明显，如果我们美国人关心我们的能源安全、经济力量和环境质量，我们应当通过一个长期的碳收费法案，来刺激并且回报清洁能源的创新。我们不能为自己沉睡而中国清醒付出惨重的代价。 |
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发表于 2010-1-20 09:26
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