Robin Oakley (right) with the Greenpeace China team
UK campaigner Robin Oakley reports from Beijing
Beijing hides within a pall of smog. Smog spews from its coal power stations, from the weaving, beeping traffic and from the dust blowing from the inexorably encroaching Mongolian desert. This dirty haze hangs over the air, drying out your eyes, clogging your lungs.
At every intersection lurching cars and straggling tricycles compete for road space in a white knuckle game of nerves and bravado. The rule is that if they can see you then you don't slow down - it's their problem.
Many of the tricycles are piled high with fat cylinders of coal. In the country around the capital, long cargo trains haul massive loads of the same stuff. Coal hangs around China's neck like a great millstone.
I was in Beijing to support the launch of Greenpeace China's renewable energy campaign. In a country of 1.3 billion people whose electricity comes almost entirely from coal, there could not be a greater need for clean energy alternatives. The Chinese government is aware both of the urgent need to address its fossil fuel consumption and the need to find resources that are sustainable to keep its burgeoning economy powered.
As climate change pushes the desert closer and closer to Beijing and China's coal and oil imports sky rocket, the government is looking to wind power and renewable energy as a solution to its problems.
The location for the campaign's debut was the Renewable Energy Asia Conference - a massive trade show and conference paid for by Chinese and European energy businesses and sponsored by the Chinese government itself. This event was a showcase for the industry that China will develop if its renewable energy policy is a success.
Our success in promoting renewable energy, especially in Europe, meant our stand at the conference was very popular. We were inundated with requests for information. Our presence was covered by the government owned TV channel that has tens of millions of viewers and broadcasts under strict censorship rules. For Greenpeace to make it onto the screens as part of the 5pm news was a huge result. Not long after we were talking to a newspaper with a circulation of 300 million.
China's environmental problems are enormous. The global impact of its industrial growth and resource consumption could become enormous. On the other hand China's contribution to the solution could also be truly enormous.
The Chinese government is drafting a Renewable Energy Law to start the boom. If they get it right, the big wind companies will come to China and kick-start a massive domestic wind industry. Solar power will certainly be in the picture too - and indeed the solar companies were out in force at the conference.
Mass production and plummeting costs will follow, giving China a chance at being an international leader in renewable energy. The ripple effect of a major Chinese renewable energy programme could change the world.
In Chinese calligraphy the word crisis is made up of the characters for 'danger' and 'opportunity'. Both China and the world as a whole face a massive environmental and energy crisis. We have to face the danger of climate change and seize the opportunity offered by renewable energy. The Chinese government seem ready to do this. Greenpeace China definitely is.
