Hello from China!

I have just been welcomed here in Hangzhou by 200 enthusiastic participants at the conference which will host the Symposium on Thursday.  My hosts, DC Cordova and Wilson Lin, have a hugely successful business school here and have invited us to present the symposium to this 200 plus up to 800 more graduates of the school at their reunion later this week.  The reception they have provided tells me we will have an engaged and positive audience for the event.

 And here I am in China - a country I last visited in 1988. 20 years have made a huge difference, its almost cliche to say so, but to see the changes in person is a rich experience.  There is so much to absorb, too much to start on right here, all to expand on in later posts.

Then I met David, Olympic torch bearer and a proud Chinese.  He is patiently teaching me the basics of the language and helping me learn much more about the mindset of the young people who have grown up in the economic boom of the last 20 years.

And this is just the first leg of the Big Trip; as Outreach Director for the Pachamama Alliance and an ambassador of the Awakening the Dreamer Initiative I am on the road for 5 weeks to bring our work to China, and then on to New Zealand, Germany, Ireland.  Exciting and potentially hugely significant in the work we do.

Now I've got to go, find my luggage, last seen in San Francisco, fix my phone to get a signal here, and peep into my Inbox to see what's following me around the world. Till next time

Jon

 In an attempt to green up the planet, and its image, General Motors will confirm today plans to make half of its 181 plants worldwide "landfill-free" by the end of 2010. That means nothing from their manufacturing processes would end up in a landfill. "Green has become a hot commodity," says Gary Liss, a zero-waste consultant. "It's something customers are asking about. Employees want to work for companies that are green, and politicians are struggling to be greener than the next politician. It's valued because everyone got the message that we have a global crisis with climate change." Although much of the global warming debate has focused on carbon dioxide emissions, methane gas emitted from landfills actually is about 21 times more potent in causing climate change, Liss says.

At the National Governors Association conference where she first met John McCain, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had other business: making her case to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species.Months later she sued Kempthorne, arguing that the Bush administration didn't use the best science in concluding that without further protection, the polar bear faces eventual extinction because of disappearing sea ice as the result of global warming. ...Environmentalists have nicknamed Palin the ''killa from Wasilla,'' a reference to the small town where she formerly was mayor.''Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill,'' said John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, maintaining she is ''in the Stone Age of wildlife management and is very opposed to utilizing accepted science.''

Policy positions previously staked out by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

President Bush said yesterday that the relatively little damage suffered by oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico because of Hurricane Gustav should prod Congress to open more coastal areas to offshore oil drilling, sounding a political note in the wake of the storm.

And Then There Was One (NY Times)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

In an experiment worth watching, Ecuador will ask voters to decide whether nature has rights.