June 9, 2026

Month: April 2011

Charleston’s Newest Growth Dispute in the New York Times

by Keith Schneider4

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Under powder blue skies in mid-March, a small crowd of local leaders gathered on Union Pier to formally announce a $2.4 million contract to design a new maritime gateway to this beautiful coastal city. I lived in Charleston from February 1980 to September 1983, writing for The News and Courier, the local newspaper, and contributing as a freelance to Time Magazine, Southern Magazine, The New York Times, and other publications. Last month …

Read More

Our Choke Point Warning on Energy and Water — Well Received in China

by Keith Schneider1

YINCHUAN, China—The morning we travel north from this provincial capital, following the Yellow River to the Nan Liang Migration Farm, Kou Guojiang greets our arrival with a smile and a farm-fresh breakfast. It is April 13, and the bright sun lights a long table set with big purple grapes, miniature oranges, thin slices of watermelon, cherry tomatoes, and crisp red apples so cold they perspire in the warming air. Kuo is the 46-year-old chairman of …

Read More

Chengdu China’s Successful Organic Farm

by Keith Schneider11

CHENGDU, China — Just as with food safety trends in the United States, one antidote to the growing incidence of serious contamination events in China is to raise more food without farm chemicals using organic production practices.  On Tuesday this week I visited the Anlong Organic Farm about 40 miles west of Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, and one of China’s growing number of organic farms. The farm is six years old, and owned and managed …

Read More

Bob Dylan, Disney, and Barbie Tangled Up In Shanghai Blue

by Keith Schneider0

Bob Dylan performed here on Friday night in a memorable concert that featured a number of famous songs including Tangled Up In Blue, Desolation Row, and Like a Rolling Stone. His raw voice grew sweeter as his vocal cords warmed, and in the latter stages he actually sounded alot like the younger Dylan we all know so well. Though China has surpassed the United States in clean energy development, transportation, urban investment, residential housing, auto …

Read More

Shanghai is Blade Runner City

by Keith Schneider1

SHANGHAI, China – Cascades of light, like shimmering waterfalls, tumble down the sides of spiral skyscrapers here in what a friend described as China’s blade runner city. Highways are elevated, lit underneath at night in blacklight blue. A maglev train, the first in the world, speeds at 250 miles per hour to the glass and steel expanse of the international airport, which gathers the train in the folds of its white wings. It’s easy as …

Read More

Bohai Sea Pipeline Could Open China’s Northern Coal Fields

by Keith Schneider0

XI’AN, China—Last November, as government leaders considered energy goals for China’s upcoming 12th Five-Year Plan—which was adopted last month—60-year-old geographer Huo Youguang took the podium at an academic meeting about water scarcity and coal production in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, one of the driest inhabited areas on the planet. Over the next half-hour or so, Huo described a first-of-its-kind transcontinental pipeline that he believed could be a breakthrough in developing more fossil energy from Xinjiang …

Read More