China Trip Part 2: Earth Day reflections

Rural Shanxi Province, China: solar farms, transmission lines, smoke stacks, terraced farms, and housing developments

Last week I shared my thoughts following a recent family trip to China. Today, on Earth Day, I'll share a few photos that capture a lot of different things in three frames.

Rooftop solar in rural Shanxi province, China. April 2019.

• The photos are a bit fuzzy because they were taken on the high speed rail train. At this point the train was only going 200km/hour, but at other points on the trip it was cruising along at its maximum speed of 300km/hour. (When I visit most major Asian cities I inevitably get envious of the state of public transportation there vs. the U.S.)

• The photos are also fuzzy because of smog. The AQI that day was in the 300+ range.

• There are both small-scale rooftop solar installations and large solar farms. And there are transmission towers & lines to feed that energy into the grid, largely to support urban energy needs.

• In the top photo there are smokestacks-- not sure for what kind of facility.

• You can see rows of new-ish housing developments.

• Squeezed in between all of this, on every patch of arable land, often terraced into the hillsides, there are fields and orchards. It appears there may be greenhouses in the middle of the solar farm, also.

Farms and transmission lines in Shanxi province, China. April 2019.

We have one earth. To support humanity's needs and many many wants, we are currently asking more of the earth than the laws of physics and simple math allow. This is not about replacing light bulbs and hugging trees. We need to transform how we sustain our society-- how we supply energy, how we farm, how we use water, how we manage forests, how we consume, how we move, how we educate and empower people, how we drive economic growth-- so that we preserve our only source for air, food and water. That source is our one and only, precious Earth.