Reflections on US-China Climate Change Working Group

Last month, the Carnegie Council, Booz & Company, and China Reform Forum held a US-China working group in New York City on the ethics and innovations surrounding the global climate change debate ahead of the US-China summit in November and the Copenhagen climate change talks in December. The big success was in that the group was able to list a set of concrete research, technology, and policy objectives (forthcoming in a later publication).



As Nikhil Chandavarkar of UNDESA noted, the group was able to view the US-China relationship as a positive sum game and less binary than is sometimes portrayed in the press or in domestic constituencies. The group also noted how similar the United States and China are in their attachment to values. Nikhil recommended more US-China talks on the civil society level in order to build confidence between the countries.



Similarly China energy expert Chris Brown noted that the group was able to lay out a set of proposals for future cooperation--and in specifics (an unusual feat). Chris said it was one of the most "forward-looking, constructive" panels he has been on. As for the atmosphere for the US-China summit in November, Chris was encouraged by the agreement on both sides of the enormity of the climate change problem. The problem will be getting past domestic obstacles.



Carnegie Council Trustee Jonathan Gage (of Booz & Company) compared the working group to the delegation we led to Beijing last year. He sensed a growing level of trust and willingness to talk about future initiatives.



One of the big themes of the discussion was the moral obligation of businesses to society in the context of climate change. Jeff Hittner of IBM made the case that publics will hold companies to account for their impact. "Sustainabilty and profit... go hand in hand," he said. "Ethical consumers" are making decisions based on a broader set of factors, he continued. Because of the growing interconnectedness of technology, Jeff said, people can make better, more efficient decisions with a greater awareness of the impact of those decisions.

Stay tuned for our forthcoming conference statement.

Brain AIDS Discovered in America

My sensationalist headline aside, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing some serious work on global health, and the man himself is focusing on the economic variety. Gates went before Congress recently to diagnose the U.S. with what you might call Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome—a shortage of knowledge workers due to strict immigration policies, poor domestic high-tech education, and low government spending on R&D. Microsoft published a transcript of the testimony.

Given the security concerns surrounding immigration and terrorism, safely increasing visa quotas might not be as easy at it seems. But it should come as a wake-up call that one of the primary pillars of the information society can't get enough people to staff his business.

In a creative economy, the efficiency of outsourcing butts up against the fact that location is very important—if your workers can perform their tasks from anywhere, chances are they will want to be somewhere good. And as the country that advertises its freedom and opportunity, America should maintain a comparative advantage in real estate. My guess is that earnest national loyalty motivates Gates along with economic self-interest.