Christian Shepard

Fellow, GovAI · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

journalistanalyst@cdcshepherd ↗washingtonpost.com/people/christian-shepherd ↗

Christian Shepherd is an international reporter and researcher focusing on Chinese politics, climate policy, and geopolitics. Before working independently, he served as a China correspondent for The Washington Post, Financial Times, and Reuters.

10statements → 7claims → 6claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.9/5average debate potential →

6 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

7 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Christian argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Shepard: Villages near Beijing Olympic ski venues heat homes with cow dung
“There are these villages nearby there that, that were still burning you know, dried cow dung as a way of heating their houses.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 13:56 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Christian Shepard on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Christian Shepard said on the Green Blueprint that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported
Shepard: Villages near Beijing Olympic ski venues heat homes with cow dung
“There are these villages nearby there that, that were still burning you know, dried cow dung as a way of heating their houses.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 13:56 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Opinion
Shepard: Olympic green projects create an isolated bubble, not regional sustainability
“The idea that this is, is, is creating a sort of a brand new sustainable economic model, it doesn't really make sense, and it's why I keep going back to this idea of a bubble. You know, you rebuild for one area, you bring in perhaps new ways of powering things…”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 14:06 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Assertion Supported
Shepard: Beijing Olympics bought all electricity from renewables via green exchange
“It's all buying from renewables using this green exchange that Beijing has set up.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 5:43 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shepard: IOC lacks independent tools to verify host nation sustainability commitments
“The IOC doesn't have the tools in place to check up on whether or not the Olympics hosts are meeting their commitments. There haven't really been independent checks carried out in a sort of consistent way.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 7:04 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Insight
Shepard: Holding hosts to sustainability promises risks alienating dwindling candidate pool
“If they start pressuring countries to really hold true to their promises, Then they might turn off the already dwindling number of host countries that are willing to put on these events.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 9:39 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Insight
Shepard: Bureaucracy and regional coal dependence stall China's renewable transition
“And to get away from that and to start relying on renewable energies, it doesn't just take you know, a technical fix. It's sort of a bureaucratic issue. You got to rework departments. There are regions of the country that have been relying on this for growth. …”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 15:40 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Assertion Supported
Shepard: Unprofitable coal plants and insufficient renewables caused power rationing in China
“China's recovery from the pandemic has been fairly rapid, particularly in, in industry. So that means that a lot of electricity was being used, particularly as you're getting into winter. And Coal prices were down, and so coal-fired power plants, they weren't …”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 16:11 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Assertion Supported
Shepard: Many Beijing Winter Olympics transport buses run on hydrogen
“The transport, the buses that we get moved around in, a lot of those are hydrogen.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 6:08 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Assertion Supported
Shepard: Beijing reused 2008 Summer Olympic venues to reduce construction footprint
“They reused some of the venues from the Summer Olympics to try and reduce the footprint from construction.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 6:00 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics
Assertion Supported
Shepard: Final 2022 Winter Olympic Host Candidates Were Kazakhstan and China
“When it came to these Winter Olympics, the last two countries running were Kazakhstan and China.”
Christian Shepard Feb 9, 2022 ▶ 9:23 Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Greenwashing at the Beijing Olympics Feb 9, 2022 9m
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