As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

[gagquin]

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.

"It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden," says Wang Jinnan, one of China's leading environmental researchers. "There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon."

China's problem has become the world's problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China's coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.

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[dMog]

This does not even mention the human rights record of this Country.....AND people say the USA is the bad boy on the block...come people get with it....

[marke68]

:D we're all doomed anyway this just speeds things up and with china growing so quickly the rest of the world smells big bucks and turns a blind eye to the human rights abuses and land grabs,i really feel for the poor in that country as they continually get shafted by there own government...

so much for communism and its ethos of everyone's equal.... :D

[3NIGM4]

Communism is good on paper, its human nature that make it fail :D

[marke68]

:D agree we do tend to be a very greedy species,one thing i'll be curious to see is just how free and open china really is as their going to have an influx of western journalists and tourists during the Olympics,it'll be quite interesting to see if any visitors are allowed to travel around china freely to see some of the more rural parts of china,i suspect not i can only see a few government monitered tours around the outskirts of Beijing and the customary tour of the great wall.

shame really as its supposed to be a beautiful country. :D

[3NIGM4]

Quoting myself from another post.

Ive been to China last october for an international event. Ive seen many weird things behind the tourist trap. The fraction between generation feel strange. The old generation work tirelessly for the state goal or simply to survive and the new generation refuse to embrace that philosophy. So there is palpable dissension between the governement and the new generation. But there is a bigger dissension between older and younger generation, wich have no precedent, cause we all know that Chineses respect the elder WAY better than we do in north america. To welcome us at that international event, the streets of Shangai was filled with banner of greetings and support but in smaller area banner were saying (work hard to be a good host) So some work are done in result of fear instead of being proud. Chineses do 1 thing and they do it right and fast but they just cant improvise when a problem occur since initiative is strongly disapproved. One time we went to a restaurant, 8 of us. That small restaurant was not used to receive large group, and we were nort-american on top of that... So the waitress didnt have a 8 persons table so she told us to wait while she go ask her boss what to do. Meanwhile as arrogant north-american we just step in the restaurant and get 3 tables together to make it fit... So when she comes back with his boss, you shouldve see her face... PRICELESS hahahahha Its like it was the end of the world. Chineses just discovered 2 weeks of holidays and credit cards, imagine when all of the 20 millions chineses in shangai wants a car... In beijing there is 2000 cars more every DAY... Overall we were well received in China and everybody was polite and smile all the time, wich gets on my nerve. Later on i learned that Chinese people refrain most of their emotion because showing your anger for exemple is showing no self-control, the only emotion they always show is smiling even when they are mad lol. Since showing your emotion is not comon, crusing a girl in a bar is like opening yourself to a life engagement.

Anyway as i always say when we discuss politics : Communist is good on paper, human nature make it worse

I believe that Churchill said : Democratic is not the best governement its the less worse (or something like that).

[dock98]

Communism is good on paper, its human nature that make it fail :)

communism is supposed to be a tool leading to socialisim.(according to marks and engels

the communist manifesto),only it never gets there.the world is forever changing and i dont believe in a lot of this doomed shit.just socialist propganda to continue studies that put money in their coffers.china will evelve as the rest of the world will.the defeatist attitude,fortunately,is only held by a small percent of the people.

[marke68]

:) Oh my friend we most certainly are doomed unless you don't believe in this so called global warming and china's growth is speeding up the process nicely,i dont really give us much longer to be honest maybe another 200 years if we're lucky.

Natures going to bite us on the arse good and proper and boy do we deserve it... :D

[3NIGM4]

I guess it will be the humanity format c:/y

[marke68]

I guess it will be the humanity format c:/y

:) sorry bud that one went right over my head...i'm still a noob... :)

[Bolt_Gundam510]

well this is bull shit China wanted more jobs for there people well the companys went over there, China was like yeaaa we got more jobs for our people or something like that. but what they didn't know is that they also get our pollution that goes along with that growth, they are more laxed in there rules for a clean world, if you was to ask one of them over there what the EPA stands for. they will be like what's the EPA.