China Environmental Law

China Environmental Law Blog (CELB) is one year old today.  Actually, tomorrow is our real birthday, if tomorrow were February 29; but it isn’t, so we’re celebrating today. 

The generosity of your gifts during this period of economic distress has been truly astounding.  I can’t count the number of Adobe Acrobat 7.0 discs we received.  Who even knew it was available on disc; only in China I guess.  We were especially touched by the hour glass we received from Greenpeace China.  It is engraved with “Time is running out.”  The perfect birthday pick me up. 

CELB steadily gains readership, we’re averaging 5,000,000 hits a month, or something like that.  Anyway its tons and tons, but then, who isn’t interested in Chinese Environmental Law? 

As we scan the horizon from the CELB penthouse offices on an admittedly very “hazy” day here in Shanghai, we can’t help reflect back on the past year.  We would be remiss if we didn’t note the progress that has been made in cleaning up China’s environment.  We here at CELB are quick to smack down the notion that China is leading the green vanguard, but we are equally impatient with those who characterize China as an environmental inferno and its leaders as unrepentant environmental sinners.  There are many people who mean well and are working for progress in China both inside and outside the government.  The progress is incremental, and the challenges are enormous. Nevertheless, things are starting to change-slowly, but steadily.  Good luck to all those working to make China a cleaner, better place to live!

Enough of that.  We’ve opened up a vintage Tiger Bone Wine; the ayis are in the kitchen slicing up some more 驴肉 (thanks Andrew Grieve for the sharing the site devoted to donkey meat connoisseurship), the staff have asked the renovation crew next door to apply an extra dose of everyone’s favorite solvent, Atomic Dust, and we’ve got John Denver on the karaoke machine.  Man, it doesn’t get any better than this!