permaculture

["wenshidi@yahoo.co.uk" <wenshidi@yahoo.co.uk>]

"last week in Beijing, when air pollution readings from a monitoring station 
at the U.S. Embassy soared past 500 — a level so astonishing it prompted the 
embassy’s automated air pollution Twitter feed (which usually rates Beijing’s 
air quality on a scale from “Good” to “Hazardous”) to add a completely new 
rating: “Crazy Bad.”

This new prompted me to contact a friend in China who works as an investment 
advisor for one of the worlds largest corporations, and is very well 
connected with the government.  I suggested that this would be a great 
opportuntity to put together a clean up crew that would really take the 
problem seriously.  Even though I know he has a serious interest in 
permaculture and sustainability, his reply was very disheartening.

"Hi Chris,
thanks for your note. let's not overestimate our ability to get the
government to do things though...
to make any difference to the air quality one would have to embark on a
massive effort of cutting the sources of pollution across the city and
the neighboring provinces. nothing that any one party could take on.
while an increase in roof gardens and green roofs as well as "forest"
area are already on the agenda of the Beijing government,  it requires
cooperation and coordination between a huge range of governmental
departments and service providers. Don't think there would be much
accommodation for a motley crew of permaculturists we'd pull together"

I wonder how many other corporate bigwigs and government officials view us a 
'motley crew' of hippies and peaceniks.  So the question I have now is how to 
we reply to this kind of prejudice?

My own feeling is that there is no way that the corrupt officials and their 
corporate cronies will be able to fix these enormous problems that they 
themselves are responsible for creating.  They have neither the political 
will, nor the imagination and certainly not the expertise.  This was bought 
home to me when I advised him on a few large real estate projects.  There was 
not an architect, or a planner or a developer for 100 miles that had even 
heard of permaculture, let alone knew how to work according to its basic 
principles.

How should I answer his pessimism without ranting about his nagativity and 
silver spoon attitude, which I have to admit, I am really tempted to do.

My thanks in advance for any input

Chris