Clean up your act

Reader question:

What does the phase "cleaning up your act" mean?

My comments:

I have been saving questions like this for years. I put on the back burner – that is, keep them unanswered – until I have accumulated a few good examples, real examples, from the media for as I have often said in this column, we learn best from examples. In examples, we see words in action. Once out of school, we have little use for learning new words by rote – that is, trying to memorize its meaning as listed in a dictionary. Instead we come to grips with words much faster if we see them in use and try to use them in the same way. Yes, by mimicking other people, as though we were children picking up a first vocab.

I'm straying. Let's get back to the point. The point is, I'm answering the question on "cleaning up one's act" today because I've come across a good example yesterday, while I was browsing through the knowledge@wharton website. In fact, I came across a story urging China to convert its energy strategy to using alternative, cleaner, environmentally friendly sources, such as hydro, solar and nuclear power.

The story is titled: Cleaning up Its Act: How China Can Convert to More Environmentally Friendly Energy (published May 14, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton). And frankly speaking as I cast another look out the window to observe another grey morning in Beijing, so grey – which is normal – I can barely distinguish buildings 500 meters away, I think to myself once again, what an apt headline that one is.

It's an apt headline because on the issue of environmental control, China certainly has much "cleaning up" to do – a look out the window in Beijing suffices. It's high time we Chinese get out act together and put some serious store by conservation, recycling and resorting to renewable energies.

The article, by the way, says, among other things:

Pollution aside, energy presents a hefty challenge for China. Simply put, the country doesn't have enough of it, said McElwrath and other experts who came to Wharton. "Twenty-one of 34 provinces experienced electricity shortages in 2004," he said. "China will need to add a total of 1,300 additional gigawatts by 2025." According to Bloomberg News, China currently has about 800 gigawatts of electric capacity. "If coal provides 70% to 80% of that power, what this implies for air quality and global warming is surreal," McElwrath warned.

The Dirtiest of the Fossil Fuels

China now derives about three-fourths of its electricity from burning coal, and it has rapidly constructed new coal-fired plants to keep pace with burgeoning power demand. In 2006, the country "brought online about as much coal-power capacity each week as the United States and India together did over the entire year," according to the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit research group specializing in environmental issues. Put another way, China added the equivalent of two large coal-fired plants a week.

Coal is the dirtiest of the three major fossil fuels, emitting more carbon dioxide and other pollutants when burned than oil or natural gas. China lacks substantial oil and gas reserves, at least in light of its enormous appetite for energy. "The country is already second in the world in oil consumption," behind the U.S., McElwrath pointed out. "Its consumption grew at 5.5% last year, and oil demand will continue to grow rapidly."

But for now, it's mainly smoky, sooty coal fires that are clouding China's economic and environmental future. "With annual growth of 9% to 10%, coal utilization will soon approach 10 billion tons a year," McElwrath predicted. The country now consumes about 2.5 billion tons a year. "If China maintains the energy supply it needs, using coal, it will be unbearable environmentally. If it doesn't maintain that supply, it will see a drop in economic growth."

...

Chinese leaders, while they have so far focused on increasing economic growth and pulling their country up from poverty, acknowledge the health dangers of pollution and have begun to consider ways of bringing cleaner energy. One promising method is capturing the pollutants released when coal burns. Earlier this year, research institutes in China and Australia teamed up to build a pilot plant in China to test such a technology. The Australian group said that the method had the potential to reduce carbon emissions from coal-burning plants by 85%.

Going Nuclear

Another technology under consideration is coal gasification, which transforms coal into a synthetic fuel, known as syngas, which burns as cleanly as natural gas. "Coal gasification has the potential to squelch power plants' emission of soot and smog, and also to decrease China's growing dependence on imported oil," according to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It could even help control emissions of carbon dioxide, which is more easily captured from syngas plants than from conventional coal-fired plants."

McElwrath, for his part, argued that the only realistic long-term solution to China's energy needs and polluted skies is to ditch coal. The best alternative: "Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear: The only thing that will legitimately replace coal will be for China to aggressively build nuclear plants." No other means of generation can deliver the massive amount of power that China needs soon enough, he stated.

That's not to say that renewable sources like hydroelectricity, wind power, solar and biofuels won't have a place in China's energy portfolio, he added. Chinese leaders have laid out ambitious plans for rolling out renewable energy. Their goal is to derive 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. "Hydro would be 80% of that," McElwrath said. Currently, China gets less than 10% of its electricity from renewables, and most of that comes from hydroelectric plants.

In at least one renewable field – solar-thermal water-heating - China already has made significant progress, according to Andy Goldstein, China-based market development manager for Apricus Solar. "China accounts for 70% of the world's solar-thermal market," he noted, adding that "90% of the hot water produced at Beijing Olympic sites will be with solar-thermal."

Back to the term itself. "Clean up one's act" is an American idiom. It's one of many awkward sounding (awkward to the Chinese ear at any rate) idioms involving the word "act", such as "class act", "tough act to follow", "act the hero", "act your age", "put on an act", "get your act together", etc, etc.

Oh, definitions. If one needs to clean up one's act, it means you need to reform, to mend your ways and perhaps to drop some bad habits. In terms of Beijing's smoggy air today, cleaning up our act means, well, we need to have another wind blowing. We need a gale in fact – and we need it now.