Six months after leaving Istanbul, and cycling 5,500 miles (and taking a few buses, trains, boats, and trucks), we reached the eastern coast of China, thus officially crossing Asia with our bicycles. In addition to enjoying the open road and making friends with farmers, yak herders, and businessmen, we’ve talked to people we’ve met along the way about climate change. Do they hear much about the issue? Are they worried about it? In the cities, we’ve spoken with experts and advocates. In the countryside we’ve interviewed laypeople, showing them a piece of paper with questions written in the local language, asking if people think the weather has changed in their lifetime (Are winters warmer or colder than when you were a child? Are summers warmer or colder than when you were a child? Does it rain more or less?). The goal is to identify long-term trends — instead of what the weather is like this year — and we film their answers for later translation.

This is an extremely unscientific survey. Its goal is to get a firsthand impression of climate change in the regions we’re traveling through, and to use our journey to better understand the issues that we’ve focused on for much of our careers. Our travels aren’t over yet (we will cross parts South Asia next), but here are some of our observations from the journey so far:

1. Most people say it is getting warmer. While some of the interviews we’ve recorded still need to be translated (we don’t speak much Turkish, Georgian, Uzbek, Russian, Tajik, or Chinese), it’s clear that many people think it is warmer than it used to be. In Tajikistan, almost everyone we talked to said that there is now much less snow than there used to be. I’m sometimes skeptical of people’s abilities to perceive changes in the climate (I don’t easily remember what the weather was like ten years ago), but we’ve still been surprised by how consistently people across the region have said that the weather has warmed, or that there is less snow than there used to be.

2. Some people have been negatively affected, but most say the changes have not made a big difference in their lives. Although we haven’t translated some of our interviews in China, we have only two specific cases of climate change (or what is likely climate change) negatively affecting people’s lives: wheat farmers in Turkey said that warmer temperatures had hurt their crops (something that is backed up by scientific research), and people in the mountains of Tajikistan said that there is less water to irrigate in the summer when they don’t have snow in the winter, something that has become more common in recent years. (People living near the former Aral Sea said that the weather had changed and made life more difficult, but the changes in climate are mostly due to losing the Aral Sea, not global climate change.)

Mostly, though, people said that the changes had little effect on their lives. The same villagers in Tajikistan who said that less snow was bad for agriculture said less snow kept the roads open in winter, allowing more goods to arrive from the capital. And although Tajikistan is extremely poor, most people in the countryside seem to rely not on farming to survive, but on instead on family members working in Russia and sending money home — so they seemed less concerned about crop failure than we expected, as they actually end up buying much of their food. In China, although we don’t have many of the interviews translated, when we pointed to the question of whether changes in the weather had affected them, most gave us the thumbs up, as if to say “life is better now” and the changes haven’t affected them — which makes sense, as China’s rapidly growing economy has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty in just three decades, improving quality of life for most people.

This isn’t to say that people haven’t yet been affected by climate change here or in other parts of the world. Warmer temperatures and slightly stronger storms and droughts have made life difficult for many people. Also, sometimes people may not be aware that these changes are affecting them or stressing their society. For instance, drought likely contributed to the Syrian civil war. And fairly convincing research shows that in warmer years, people and societies are more violent. People experiencing this upheaval and violence probably wouldn’t say “it’s because of the weather,” when in fact, the weather may play a role.

Nonetheless, when we crossed the continent by bicycle and interviewed people as we traveled, we encountered few people who say the changing weather is already causing them hardship. This isn’t surprising, but it also highlights the fact that even though climate change is here, and people are noticing it, the majority of its dangerous consequences are still in the future.

3. Local environmental movements sometimes help climate action, but sometimes they don’t. The two countries we visited that are building the most infrastructure, and whose emissions are growing the fastest, were Turkey and China. In both countries, we saw countless new power plants or dams under construction (usually while cycling on newly paved roads). Both countries have seen their economies more than double in the past decade, and both look for continued growth.

In China, concern over air, water, and soil pollution, often as a result of burning coal, has put pressure on the government to reduce the country’s dependence on this particular fossil fuel. As we learned in Beijing, one third of China’s provinces already have coal reduction plans in place. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one reason for these limits, but the bigger reason is local air pollution.

In Turkey, the situation is different. We talked to a number of advocates, and we found that the biggest environmental movements in Turkey were 1) opposition to new hydroelectric dams, and 2) opposition to new nuclear power plants. We are sympathetic to both of these movements. Turkey is building a dam almost everywhere it can, forcibly removing people from their homes. And I might not trust the Russian companies that are building some of the nuclear power plants to do so in my backyard. Yet if these movements are successful, the result might be that Turkey builds more coal power plants instead of relying on relatively CO2-free hydro and nuclear power.

4. The international process matters. After attending the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, like many other people, I lost a good deal of faith in international climate negotiations. Countries made pitiful pledges to reduce emissions, and it wasn’t clear that the negotiations led to significant cuts.

However, the two countries we visited that are building the most new carbon-polluting infrastructure, China and Turkey, also seem to respond to international pressure. Turkey has very ambitious goals for installing new wind power over the next decade, and according to the people we spoke with, this is partially because they have to adopt renewable energy targets if they want to join the EU. The case for China is less clear, as some experts have said that China doesn’t respond to such pressure. Others, though, have pointed out that China cares deeply about how it is perceived by the rest of the world. And after being in the country, and learning more about “face” and how important it is, it seems clear that China’s leaders do care that they are the biggest polluter, and they do not like bad press about China. Both countries are likely doing more to combat climate change than they would in absence of an international process.

Next we are taking a train from Shanghai to Lhasa, and then taking a jeep to Nepal, where we will start biking again (China forbids independent travel in Tibet, so we are unable to cycle across the plateau unless we hire a jeep to follow us for several weeks; instead, we are taking a train to Lhasa and then a group tour to the border with Nepal). From Nepal, we will ride for three more months, crossing parts of Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and (visas permitting) Myanmar, logging another few thousand kilometers. These regions, especially India’s state of Bihar and Bangladesh, are far poorer than anywhere we’ve been, and much more vulnerable to climate change. We will share with you more of what we learn here, and you can follow us on our blog or interactive map.

Six months after leaving Istanbul, after cycling 5,000 miles (and taking a few buses, trains, boats, and trucks), we arrived in in Beijing, the capital of the world’s most polluting nation. We were warned about biking into the city (it has “rings the size of Jupiter”), but we were pleasantly surprised to find that its wide roads had paralleling bike/scooter lanes for people like us. Although the air stung our eyes and the smog made our lungs burn, we felt safer riding into Beijing than I feel riding into most cities in the U.S.

We spent almost two full weeks in the capital, which we used to speak at two schools and two community events, and to meet with people at a few of the major environmental NGOs: the World Resources Institute (WRI), Greenpeace, the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Up to this point, most of our conversations about climate change have been with people in the countryside (In some cases we understood them — and in others we have no idea what they said). Now we could speak with the “experts.”

A few consistent messages emerged from our meetings. The biggest message is that the top leadership in China “gets it.” They understand that climate change is serious, and that the country needs to do something about it — and the people we spoke with said that this was not the case just five or six years ago. The bigger challenge is implementation of new environmental policies throughout all levels of the government, as proper incentives might not be in place, and provincial leaders either lack training or don’t have the same priorities.

From our conversations, it appears that the government’s motivation to reduce emissions comes from a few sources. The main driver is definitely local pollution and the public outcry over dirty air, water, and soil (and consequently food). Addressing these concerns would fortunately result in lower greenhouse gas emissions, as there is substantial overlap in the sources of particulate emissions and greenhouse gases. (Of course, this is only the case if polluters clean up rather than simply being displaced to other parts of China or other countries). China is also interested in becoming a world leader. According to many people we spoke with, China cares about its image on the world stage, and the international process is thought to have some effect. Finally, China is considered highly vulnerable to climate change. Of all the impacts of climate change that came up in our conversations — sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, increased droughts — food security was the most frequently mentioned. Water scarcity is already a major problem in the north, which is also a major food-producing area and the site of many of China’s new, water-hungry power plants. Some villages have already been abandoned due to lack of water, creating climate refugees. If climate change results in even less water in this region, such problems could be exacerbated.

To help cut dependence on fossil fuels, NGOs can play a significant role. China is not a free society, and civil society plays a different role than it does in the U.S. Namely, NGOs are not allowed to directly challenge the government’s decisions. But because the central government wants action and has adopted several policies regarding pollution and climate change, it seems to welcome these organizations helping them identify both problems and solutions (although one person we spoke with did say that the central police interviewed him because of general suspicions around foreign NGOs).

Perhaps the best example is IPE, started by Ma Jun. IPE publishes pollution statistics and maps online, using data from government agencies. IPE thus helps publicize and highlight pollution violations, helping the government enforce laws that are already on the books but not necessarily followed. Currently, they do not focus on greenhouse gas emissions — mostly local air and water pollution — but they show how environmental NGOs can help make a difference. Our contact at IPE said, “The major problem is not regulations, but the lack of enforcement.”

And although the people can’t vote, public discourse matters. A few years ago, nobody talked about measurements for PM 2.5 — that is, particulate matter in the atmosphere about 2.5 microns in size, which has been shown to cause all types of health problems. One expert said, “In 2006, the air was really bad, but no one talked about it. Taxi drivers said it was ‘fog.’”

But over the past few years, air quality has deteriorated further. 2011 was a particularly bad year in Beijing, and newspapers have started covering such pollution more seriously. Also, the U.S. embassy was tweeting the PM 2.5 measurements in Beijing every day, and the papers reported on this pollution. Soon the government started reporting the numbers as well and recognizing the problem. Now everyone talks about measurements of air quality in Beijing. We have seen advertisements for masks that protect from “PM 2.5” and there is a free app that reports the AQI (Air Quality Index) for various pollutants.

At NRDC and Greenpeace, we talked largely about the country’s efforts to slow or reverse coal consumption. China now burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and coal power accounts for about 80 percent of the nation’s electricity. One of the major reasons that global greenhouse gas emissions have increased over the last decade is China’s construction of new coal-fired power plants. These power plants have also polluted the local water and air.

Greenpeace told us that they help educate government officials on the problems — for instance, before 2010, government officials were relatively unaware of how coal consumption also stressed water supplies. Mining, processing, and burning coal require massive amounts of water, and in China’s north, where most of the coal is found, there is little water. The five year plan for coal consumption did not reflect the physical limits set by water availability.

Greenpeace reports that 12 of the nation’s 34 provinces, accounting for just under half of China’s coal consumption, have made pledges to reduce emissions. Due in part to an economic slowdown, the pace of the increase of coal consumption has already been reduced — and one report says it even has decreased, although some experts told us to view this number with skepticism.

One challenge, in general, is that pollution limits are more lax in the nation’s relatively poorer west than in the prosperous coastal cities. One worry is that pollution caps in the east won’t necessarily reduce emissions, as more power plants may just be built inland or in other countries — similar to the way that factories are built in China instead of the (wealthier and more pollution-intolerant) United States. Nonetheless, the efforts are moving in the right direction.

One question we ask everyone is simply: “Is China the problem or the solution?” This is the paradox of China: Is it the country doing the most to cause climate change or the most to solve it? Will China save the world from climate change, or doom it to out-of-control warming? Our strongest impression from these meetings is not an answer to this question, though. It is that there is lots of very important work to be done here to reduce emissions, that this work is underway, and that it is possible to work with the Chinese government to slow and even reverse emissions growth.

The day after we left Beijing, Xi and Obama made a joint announcement to reduce emissions. While their goals fall short of what we need, such cooperation is an enormous leap in the right direction, and after our conversations in Beijing, I believe the Chinese leadership is sincere in their pledges. Now the challenge is acting.

Help us translate!

As we bike across China, we’ve been interviewing people about whether they think the climate has changed. We do this by showing them a sheet that has questions written in Chinese (“Are winters warmer or colder than when you were a child?” “Are summers warmer or colder than they used to be?” “Is there more or less rain than when you were a child?” “Have these changes affected you? Have they affected people in your community?” and so on) and filming their responses.

Now we have a number of videos – but we have no idea what people said to us.

We’ve uploaded most of these videos below. If you speak Chinese, we could use your help translating them! We are very curious what people said.

Restaurant Before Great Wall
Before Great Wall
Town Long Day
Getting Dark Village
Elderly Men
Restaurant
Town Store
Corn
Threshing
Carrot Farmers
Day 3 Bautou
Day After Baotou
Baotou 2
Baotou 1
China Post
With Yankee