Last week, the world marked the 51st Earth Day. This year’s theme – “Restore Our Earth” – was apt. As the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us, the effects of human activity on the planet do not respect borders. The Earth is a single living, self-regulating system, and it demands a single, shared system of accounting that balances at the global level. We need a one-Earth balance sheet.
In a 1946 telegram, Albert Einstein pleaded for funding to finance the “life-and-death struggle to harness the atom for the benefit of mankind and not for humanity’s destruction,” arguing that a “a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” The same can be said about the environmental crisis humanity has created. Surviving it, and achieving a better, more sustainable future, requires “a new type of thinking.”
A one-earth balance sheet
By Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng
HONG KONG Last week, the world marked the 51st Earth Day. This year’s theme “Restore Our Earth” was apt. As the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us, the effects of human activity on the planet do not respect borders. The Earth is a single living, self-regulating system, and it demands a single, shared system of accounting that balances at the global level. We need a one-Earth balance sheet.
In a 1946 telegram, Albert Einstein pleaded for funding to finance the “life-and-death struggle to harness the atom for the benefit of mankind and not for humanity’s destruction”, arguing that a “a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels”. The same can be said about the environmental crisis humanity has created. Surviving it, and achieving a better, more sustainable future, requires “a new type of thinking”.
A one-earth balance sheet
By Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng
HONG KONG Last week, the world marked the 51st Earth Day. This year’s theme “Restore Our Earth” was apt. As the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us, the effects of human activity on the planet do not respect borders. The Earth is a single living, self-regulating system, and it demands a single, shared system of accounting that balances at the global level. We need a one-Earth balance sheet.
In a 1946 telegram, Albert Einstein pleaded for funding to finance the “life-and-death struggle to harness the atom for the benefit of mankind and not for humanity’s destruction”, arguing that a “a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels”. The same can be said about the environmental crisis humanity has created. Surviving it, and achieving a better, more sustainable future, requires “a new type of thinking”.
With his plan to build a concert of democracies to contain China, US President Joe Biden is making a grave mistake. The US and China should each be doing their part to protect the global commons, not competing for global dominance.
SONG CHEN/CHINA DAILY
As the United States prepares for a radical course-correction on climate change, China is raising its game. Climate action has become yet another front in the competition between the world s two largest economies.
Who will cross the net-zero-emissions finish line first?
US president-elect Joe Biden is prepared to hit the ground running. He has declared that the US will return to the Paris Agreement on his first day in office, and vowed to put emissions reduction efforts and clean energy jobs at the center of his administration s economic policymaking, with the goal of reaching net-zero emission no later than 2050.