When is seeing not believing? A couple years ago, my friend sent me this photo from Ürümqi, which is the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China. On this particular day, she couldn't believe her eyes. Checking the quality of the air outside using this app on her iPad, the numbers were telling her the air quality was good, one on a scale of 500. But when she looked outside, she saw something much different. Yes, those are buildings in the background.
﻿什么时候眼见不实？ 几年前，我朋友给我发了这张 来自乌鲁木齐的照片， 它是中国西北部新疆省的省会。 在这个特定的日子里， 她无法相信自己的眼睛。 用她iPad上这个手机应用 查看外面的空气质量， 数字告诉她空气质量优质， 在500的范围内质量为1。 但当她看外面，她看到了 一些很不一样的东西。 是的，这些是背景的建筑。
(Laughter)
（笑声）
But the data were simply not telling the truth of what people were seeing and breathing, and it's because they were failing to measure PM2.5, or fine particulate pollution. When PM2.5 levels went off the charts in 2012, or "crazy bad," as the US Embassy once described it in a tweet, Chinese denizens took to social media and they started to question why it was that they were seeing this disconnect between official air quality statistics and what they were seeing and breathing for themselves.
但数据只是没有反映 人们看到和呼吸到的真相。 这是因为中国没能监测PM2.5， 或细颗粒污染。 当2012年PM2.5水平爆表时， 或者“糟糕透了”，正如美国大使馆 在一条推特上所说， 中国公民使用社交媒体 开始质疑为什么官方空气质量统计数据 与他们自己看到和呼吸的 存在这么大的脱节。
Now, this questioning has led to an environmental awakening of sorts in China, forcing China's government to tackle its pollution problems. Now China has the opportunity to become a global environmental leader. But the picture that I'll paint for you today is one that's mixed. There are some signs that are very promising, and there are other trends that are more troubling that warrant closer attention. But now let's go back to the story at hand.
这个质疑引发了 中国环境意识的觉醒， 迫使中国政府解决污染问题。 现在中国有机会成为全球环境领袖。 但今天我要给你们描绘的画面 要更加混合。 有一些迹象非常令人鼓舞， 但也有一些令人不安的趋势 需要更值得关注。 现在让我们回到手头的故事。
I started to witness the beginnings of China's green evolution when I was a PhD student conducting fieldwork in China in 2011. I traveled all across the country seeking answers to the question that I often got myself from the skeptical outsider: What, you mean China is doing something on the environment? They have environmental policies? What policies? At that time, PM2.5 data was considered too politically sensitive and so the government was keeping it secret, but citizens were becoming aware of its harmful human health effects, and they were demanding greater transparency on the part of the government. I actually started to see some of this growing evolution and awareness myself cropping up all over China. Department stores, for example, started to market these air purifiers that could filter out harmful PM2.5. Citizens were also adopting PM2.5 as the title of musical festivals.
我开始见证中国绿色革命的开端， 当2011年我还是一名博士生， 在中国进行实地考察时。 我全国到处行走寻找回答 外部质疑者的怀疑问题： 什么，你说中国有在做环境相关的事情？ 他们有环保政策？ 什么政策？ 当时，PM2.5被认为政治太敏感， 于是政府秘而不宣， 但公众开始逐渐意识到它的健康危害， 他们要求政府 提高透明度。 事实上，我开始看到这些不断增长 的演变和意识 在中国各地不断冒出。 例如，百货商店开始销售空气净化器 用来过滤有害的PM2.5。 公民也用PM2.5作为音乐节的名字。
(Laughter)
（笑声）
And then I went to a golf course in Shenzhen, which is in southern China, and you can see from this banner, they're advertising a retreat from PM2.5. Golf sub-par, but don't breathe sub-par air. And then Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau decided to create a mascot named after the air quality index to better communicate the air quality data to its people. I call her AQI Girl, and her expression and hair color changes depending on the quality of air outside. Five years later and she's still the mostly smiling face of Shanghai's air quality.
后来我去了深圳的一个高尔夫球场， 它在中国南方， 你可以从这条横幅上看到， 他们在宣传这里几乎没有PM2.5。 高尔夫球场低于平均水平， 不要呼吸低标准的空气。 然后是上海的环境保护局 决定创建一个以空气质量指数命名的吉祥物 来更好地跟民众沟通空气质量指数。 我叫她为AQI女孩（空气质量指数女孩）， 她的表情和头发的颜色会随着 外面空气的质量而变化。 五年后，上海空气质量在大部分情况下 都是微笑面孔。
And then in 2015, former CCTV reporter Chai Jing created this documentary called "Under the Dome." It would be likened to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." And much like Rachel Carson brought to attention the fact that pesticides were harming human health, "Under the Dome" stamped into the popular consciousness that air pollution was leading to one million premature deaths every year in China alone. This video garnered more than a hundred million views in a single weekend before China's government, fearing that it might incite some type of social unrest, pulled it from the internet. But the damage had already been done.
然后在2015年， 中央电视台前记者柴静 制作了纪录片《穹顶之下》。 这就好比蕾切尔·卡逊的《寂静的春天》。 很像蕾切尔·卡逊 唤起人们关注杀虫剂正在危害人类健康， 《穹顶之下》让人们意识到 空气污染每年光在中国就导致100万人 过早死亡。 这个视频 在政府干预前的一个周末内 播放量就超过了1亿， 政府担心这会引起社会动荡， 从互联网下架了此视频。 但损害已经造成。
Public outcry over air pollution galvanized China's government, perhaps in an act of self-preservation, to think big and decisively about how it could tackle the root of its air pollution and many of its other environmental problems: its energy system. For you see, in China, about two thirds of its electricity comes from coal. China has more coal-fired power plants than any other country in the world, about 40 percent of the global total, and it's because of this fact that China's government has decided since 2014 to wage a war on coal, shutting down small coal mines, setting limits on coal consumption, even canceling an Australia's worth of coal-fired power plants. They've also been making enormous investments when it comes to clean and renewable energy, like hydropower, wind and solar, and the pace and the scale of this transformation has been absolutely mind-blowing. Let me give you a couple of statistics to show you what I mean. China leads the world when it comes to hydropower, with a third of total capacity. There's enough for every Chinese citizen to power two homes in a single year from hydropower alone. You may have heard of the Three Gorges Dam, pictured here, which is the largest power station in the world, and it's powered by water. In terms of wind power, China has a third of the global capacity. This makes it the number one leader by far. When we look at solar, China's also leading. In fact, they crushed their 2020 target of installing 105 gigawatts of solar power. This is after the government already revised upwards several times its solar energy target between 2009 and 2015. Last year, in seven months alone, China was able to install a whopping 35 gigawatts of solar power. This is more than half of what the US has combined in total and China did this in just seven months alone. We can verify this remarkable growth in solar power from space, like the startup SpaceKnow has done in this slide. By 2020, China is on track to generate Germany's entire electricity consumption from just wind and solar power alone. It's pretty darn remarkable.
公众对空气污染的愤怒 刺激了中国政府， 或许是出于自我保护， 从大的和决定性的角度考虑 如何解决空气污染的根源 以及它的很多其他环境问题： 它的能源体系。 如你所见，中国， 大概2/3的电力来自煤炭。 中国拥有世界上最多的燃煤发电厂， 占全球总量的40%， 正是因为这个事实，中国政府 决定2014年开始对煤炭宣战， 关闭小煤矿， 限制煤炭消费， 甚至关闭了相当于澳大利亚 的煤炭发电厂。 他们也在诸如水力发电， 风能和太阳能 那样的清洁和可再生能源上 做了大举投入， 这种转变的速度和规模 绝对令人震惊。 让我给你们一组统计数据阐明我的意思。 在水力发电方面， 中国以全球1/3的容量 领先全球。 仅水力发电一年 就足够每个中国公民为两户人家 提供电力。 你们可能听过三峡大坝， 图片在这， 是世界上最大的发电站， 它是由水驱动的。 风电方面， 中国占全球装机容量的1/3. 这它成为遥遥领先的第一名。 当我们看太阳能时， 中国也处于领先地位。 事实上，他们实现了2020年 安装105千兆瓦太阳能的目标。 在此之前，中国政府 已在2009年至2015年间数次上调 太阳能目标。 去年，仅仅在7个月内， 中国太阳能装机容量达到了 惊人的35千兆瓦。 这一数字超过了美国总和的一半， 而且中国在7个月的时间内就做到了。 我们可以从太空中验证 太阳能的显著增长， 如初创公司天空之眼(SpaceKnow) 的这张图表上所示。 到2020年，中国有望只通过风能和太阳能 就能实现德国的全部电力消费。 这是相当惊人的。
And we see some evidence now that China's efforts on clean energy is actually having an effect, not just on air pollution reduction, but also on global climate change, where China has the world's largest carbon footprint. If we look at some of the data, we can see that China's coal consumption may have already reached a peak as early as 2013. This is a major reason why China's government announced that actually they've already achieved their 2020 carbon reduction pledge ahead of schedule. This reduction in coal consumption is also directly driving improvements in air quality across the country, as I've shown here in blue. In most major Chinese cities, air pollution has fallen by as much as 30 percent. And this reduction in air pollution is actually leading people to live longer lives in China, on average two and a half years more than they would have in 2013. In yellow, we can see the cities that have experienced the greatest improvements in air quality.
我们现在可以看到一些证据， 中国在清洁能源上的努力 确实在产生成效， 不仅对减少空气污染， 但也对全球气候变化， 中国是世界上碳排放量最大的国家。 如果我们看数据，可以看到中国的煤炭消费 可能早在2013年就达到了峰值。 这是中国政府之所以宣布 他们已经提前实现2020年减排承诺 的主要原因。 煤炭消费的减少 也直接改善了全国各地的 空气质量， 就如我在这里展现的蓝色部分。 在多数主要中国城市， 空气污染下降多达30%。 空气污染的减少也确实让中国人们 寿命增加， 平均比2013年多两年半。 黄色这些，是我们可以看到的 空气质量改善最大的城市。
But of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, we have to temper some of this optimism with a healthy dose of caution, and that's largely because the data are still being determined. At the end of last year, after roughly three years of pretty steady global carbon emissions, scientific projections suggest that global emissions may be on the rise again and that could be due to increases in China's fossil fuel consumptions, so they may not have reached that peak that I showed earlier. But of course, the statistics and the data are still murky and that's because China regularly revises its coal statistics after the fact. Actually, it's funny, since I've been here I've been having a debate on Twitter with other climate modelers, trying to figure out whether China's carbon emissions have gone up, gone down or whether they're staying relatively stable. And of course, China is still a rapidly developing country. It's still experimenting with a range of policies, like dockless bike sharing, which has been hailed as a possible sustainable transport solution. But then we have images of this bicycle graveyard that tell a more cautionary tale. Sometimes, solutions can move too fast and outpace demand. And of course, coal is still king in China, at least for now.
但当然，就如我在这个演讲开头 提到的那样， 我们必须用适当的谨慎 来缓和这种乐观情绪， 这很大程度上是因为数据还未最终确认。 去年年底， 在全球碳排放量稳定增长大约三年之后， 科学预测表明， 全球排放量可能再次上升 这可能是由于中国化石燃料消费的增加， 所以它们可能没有达到 我之前展示的峰值。 但当然，统计数据和数据仍然模糊不清， 这是因为中国在事后定期修正 煤炭统计数据。 实际上，这很有趣， 自从我来到这里，我就在推特上和其他 气候模型专家辩论， 想要搞清楚中国的碳排放 是上升，下降还是保持相对稳定。 当然，中国仍然是快速发展中国家。 它仍然在试验各种政策， 比如无桩共享单车， 这被认为是一种可行的可持续交通解决方案。 但后来我们有这个自行车墓地的图片 说明一个更值得警惕的故事。 有些时候，解决方案变化太快 并超出需求。 当然，煤炭仍然是中国的王者， 至少目前而言。
So why should we care about what China is doing on the environment? Well, what China does at home on the environment can have global implications for the rest of us. To borrow a line from Chai Jing, we're all under the same dome, and air pollution that originates in China can travel beyond its borders and affect populations as far away as those in North America. China's not only exporting air pollution, but they're also exporting aid, infrastructure, technology abroad. President Xi Jinping in 2013 announced the One Belt, One Road Initiative, a massive, one-trillion-US-dollar infrastructure investment project in more than 60 other countries. And historically, when we've seen that China has made these infrastructure investments abroad, they haven't always been clean. The Global Environment Institute, a Chinese civil society group, found that in the last 15 years, China has invested in more than 240 coal-fired power plants in more than 68 countries affiliated with the One Belt, One Road Initiative. That's more than a quarter of China's own domestic coal-fired capacity that is exported abroad.
那么，我们为什么要关心中国 在环境上的所作所为呢？ 中国在国内环境问题上的作为可能会对 我们其他国家产生全球性的影响。 引用柴静的一句台词， 我们都生活在同一个穹顶下， 来自中国的空间污染 可以跨越国家扩散 影响远至北美的人民。 中国不仅出口空间污染， 他们也在向国外输出援助， 基础设施和技术。 2013年习近平主席宣布一带一路倡议， 一个规模庞大，价值1万亿美元， 覆盖超过60个其他国家 的基础设施建设项目。 历史上，当我们看 中国在海外进行基础设施投资时， 它们并不总是清洁的。 全球环境研究所，一个中国公民社会组织， 发现在过去15年， 中国已经在68个国家投资超过 240个燃煤发电厂， 这与一路一带倡议有关。 超过中国国内燃煤发电能力的1/4 被出口至海外。
So we can see that even though China is cleaning up at home, it's exporting some of that pollution to other countries, and greenhouse gas emissions simply don't have a passport. So when we're trying to evaluate this question of whether or not China is actually leading, we can see it's still very much an open debate.
于是我们可以看到尽管中国国内正在改善， 它在出口部分的污染 到其他国家， 而且温室气体排放根本不用护照。 所以当我们试图评估中国 是否真正领先这个问题时， 我们可以看到仍然有太多的公开争议。
But time is running out. I've studied the climate models, and the outlook is not good. We still have a gap between current policies and what needs to happen if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. Leadership is what we desperately need, but it's not coming from the US, for example. The US administration last June announced its intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, so now people are looking towards China to fill that leadership void.
但时间所剩无几。 我研究过气候模型，前景并不乐观。 如果我们要避免危险的环境变化， 现行政策和需要做的事情之间 仍有很大的鸿沟。 领导力是我们迫切需要的， 但举例来说，美国是不能指望了。 美国政府去年6月宣布 有意退出《巴黎气候协定》， 因此现在人们希望中国来填补 这一领导真空。
So China is very much in the driver's seat determining our global environmental future. What they do on carbon trading, on clean energy, on air pollution, we can learn many lessons. One of those lessons is that clean energy is not just good for the environment, it can save lives by reducing air pollution. It's also good for the economy. We can see that last year, China was responsible for 30 percent of the global growth in green jobs. The US? Only six.
所以，中国很大程度上掌握着主动权 决定我们全球环境的未来。 他们在碳交易， 清洁能源，空气污染的作为， 我们可以学到很多东西。 其中一点是清洁能源不仅对环境好， 它可以通过减少空气污染拯救生命。 它也对经济有益。 我们可以看到去年， 中国占了全球清洁能源就业增长 中的30%。 美国呢？只有6%。
So the picture that I just painted for you hopefully seems much different from those murky, foggy air quality statistics to a much clearer picture of China's clean energy. And even though China is headed in the right direction, we know that there's still a very long road ahead.
所以我刚才给你们绘的图， 那些模糊的，雾霾的空气质量统计数据 到更加中国清洁能源更加清洁的图片 希望看起来不同。 尽管中国正朝着正确的方向前进， 我们知道前面仍有很长的路要走。
So let me ask you once more: Is seeing believing? Can we trust the data and the statistics that show that China's air quality is coming down and that its war on coal is actually having an effect? Well, let's take a look at some of the latest satellite images of China's solar power installations. I want you to look very closely at this image. Can you see? The proof may just be in the pandas.
所以让我再问你一次：眼见为实吗？ 我们能够相信数据和统计 所显示的中国空气质量指数在改善 以及对煤炭的战争取得成效了吗？ 让我们来看看中国太阳能装机的 最新的卫星图片。 我想要你们认真看看这张照片。 看到了吗？ 证据就在熊猫上。
Thank you so much.
谢谢。
(Applause)
（鼓掌）