China is becoming an environmental nightmare. Now experts from the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, a Chinese government think tank, have located the culprits. The rest of the world. We are forcing China to make products for them and as a result making their country an environmental paradise -- for polluters. Don't blame me for this bogus argument. I'm just telling you what they are saying:
A high-profile report released by a governmental think tank in Beijing, last week, berated current trade patterns, which resulted in China bearing the brunt of heavy pollution."China is the major venue of resource consumption and pollution as well as the main victim in the current economic and trade pattern," the report, titled "Review and Perspective of the Environment and Development of China" said.
. . . the report said all parties in the product chain, including manufacturers, traders and consumers, should share responsibility for ecological degradation.
The report rejected accusations by environmental watchdogs that China was destroying tropical forests by importing timber from South-east Asia, pointing out that 70 percent of the timber was being made into furniture that ended up in shops in the United States and the European Union.
"We import the raw material, produce, send the products abroad and keep the waste and pollution ourselves," Shen Guofang, an expert with the think-tank was quoted as saying by the media at the release of the report.
He warned that China's environmental record was about to get even worse as many high-polluting industries, like iron and steel, cement and construction were being relocated from the developed countries to China.
"The shift of industries is also the shift of global pollutants," Shen said. "While they (developed countries) have less environmental pressure, China has more. (IPS)
China is still behind the US in CO2 emissions, but not by much. 70% of their energy comes from burning coal. Water pollution is also a disaster and a cause of chronic unrest from communities whose environment has been despoiled by state-run industries and multinational corporations:
Water pollution is regarded as one of the most severe challenges China faces in its environmental clean up. Yet here too China has found that international companies rank among the violators of the government's environmental guidelines.
More than 30 multinational corporations (MNCs) with operations in China have violated water-pollution control guidelines, according to an investigation of official records conducted by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.
The institute, a domestic environmental non government organisation (NGO), found that some 34 MNCs, including Pepsi Co Inc, Panasonic Battery Co and Foster's Group Ltd, were reported by government bodies at local and national levels as causing water pollution.
While foreign violators represent a small fraction of the publicised 2,700 violators, Ma Jun, the institute's founder and director, said the findings created a stir with Chinese public. Nearly all of the MNCs cited were known for their commitment to protect the environment.
"You can't claim to be a responsible international corporation if you fail the emissions control," he said.
I have no doubt multinationals are behaving badly and hypocritically in China. But the bulk of the problem is homegrown, and in any event, all of it is subject to control by the Chinese government. Assuming they are able to control it. Many things in China are centrally controlled, like information, but governance is mostly decentralized and local jurisdictions act autonomously. This is one of the problems with both bird flu control and environmental control. Local officials, many of them corrupt, pursue economic growth with no concern for the environment.
So it's fine to blame WalMart or whoever in the developed world for buying cheap furniture built in China from wood imported from Indonesia. But it's also a bit ridiculous. It's one of the reasons I'm not afraid of China becoming an economic superpower. They are fouling their own nest which will do them in before they achieve dominance.
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IMO one of the problems with all the "free trade agreements" is not having any terms dealing with the environment. These agreements did allow the developed nations to export their environmental costs to the third world. As I understand, some of these agreements allow governments to be sued if regulations impair the commercial interests in their profit taking. That said, it is still the responsibility of the local governments to protect their citizens.
Yeeha! This is finally coming to light. I sent Revere a CO map generated by the MOPPIT satellite from two years ago (takes a year to get the data, then a year to process it) and its set up on the same color codes for thunderstorm activity. Picture if you will a thunderstorm the size of China during the winter months. Aint so hot during the summer either. Because of this high generation of green house gasses it drifts allll the way over into Alaska, California, and Hawaii. Yep you got it. Alaska doesnt pass the Clean Air Act in winter. Huh? Alaska? Yep. Hawaii is borderline and California because of the induced gases that are in their area from that means that they will NEVER pass the Clean Air Act. In fact, from the lead scientist in charge of the MODIS program of which MOPPIT is part of he said that they could turn everything off in Calfornia for weeks at a time and it wouldnt change squat.
So whats the answer? Kyoto Accords...? Not a chance. It just induces them to pollute more. We would have to close down businesses here if we do it as they dont have to comply for like 40 years AND MOVE THE BUSINESSES THERE! I dont think we have to worry too much. Bird flu is going to take care of business probably in the next year or so. That will clean the air up a lot.
I predict that for their next move, China will blame their rampant violations of intellectual property on the West for producing intellectual property for them to rip off. I mean, if we stopped making DVDs, they wouldn't be able to make bootleg copies of them, now would they?
M.Randolph Kruger on China...."bird flu is going to take care of business probably in the next year or so.."I agree with this prediction. NZ is currently convulsed in debate as to the wisdom of spending a billion dollars on a sport stadium,to be completed by 2010..I would really like to think that the major players will still be around to argue about opening ceremonies at that time;and btw that the West is still scrapping with China over "today's" environmental issues.After all,what will be the problem with filthy waterways etc,if there is nobody around to complain about them?
Let us keep proportions in mind.
Oil use: expressed in barrels used by 10 people per day, and very roughly:
Singapore 1.5, Kuwait 1.3, UAE 1.2, and Luxemburg 1.1
consuming .6x: (ten people per day consume around 2/3 a barrel of oil per day):
Greenland, the US, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Belgium.
consuming between .45 and .4:
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Israel, Finland, Lybia, Greece.
The high 3's (quite a bit more than a third of a barrel per 10 people per day) are Spain, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Qatar, and Bharain.
In comparison:
Bolivia: .05
China, Uzbekistan: .04
Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Senegal and Venezuela: at or very close to .02
Bangladesh: .006
Afghanistan: .002
Congo: .001 (the last)
China does burn a lot of coal. But 7 times less than Australia and 3 times less than the US. Less than GB, less than Turkey, Japan. Per Capita.
http://tinyurl.com/ynayen
(oil stats also from Nation Master)
Ana, those are good statistics but we have to clean our emissions here as they do in Aus, UK, Japan. It doesnt matter what is producing the emission, they are there plain and simple. There is no denying it and it could be produced by Chin Wei with his small fireplace in the middle of his hut in the upper highlands or some of those Chinese cities that we see in the news on full smog alerts. There are no regulations there and thats the reason that the US companies and others are moving there. They cant compete. Dont get me wrong, I am all for Kyoto but I am for it if everyone has to comply all a the same time. No spool up time because if the Al Gores are right (which I seriously doubt) it could tip over in very short order. You never discount someone even though you disagree with them. His movie was based in nothing other than pure conjecture and definitely no provable science.
Crocodiles swam in the warm lagoons in Greenland several hundred thousand years ago and no one can say anything for sure other than the air quality is crap on this planet. No one disagrees with that. You start talking about global warming, global cooling, melting icecaps and its the fastest way to start a globo fight.
Well, its happened before and it will happen again. In the 1970''s the weather guys were all saying we were going into a global cooling, now its global warming. Its global change is what it really is. Good ? Bad? No one is sure. I just hedge my bets on both sides of the table. One will be proven right eventually.
My understanding is that we outsource our manufacturing jobs to places like China, Indonesia, The Phillipines, Thailand etc because the labor costs are significantly cheaper. And that part of that cheaper manufacturing cost is due to not having to put in the expensive emissions controls on factories that are required in the US. "Our" argument is that Americans want cheap goods, and to either manufacture them in the US or to follow - in these other countries -the same stringent environmental controls on manufacturing pollution as required in the US would cause the price of goods to increase dramatically.
So?
We already overconsume to the point of gluttony, and we do so largely on credit because we can't really afford to keep up with all the other joneses, and none of this really benefits the American worker or the American economy anyway - other than those hoards of WalMart retail workers - because we are using foreign labor for most of the manufacturing process.
Is there a solution? You bet. Make it a law that American companies manufacturing goods in foreign countries have to follow AMERICAN environmental regulations and standards, regardless of the regulations of the country on whose soil they are outsourcing jobs. And if the American consumer can't afford the higher prices on goods that result, I guess they'll just have to save their pennies until they can. What price can we put on our children's future, what price on the global climate and ecosystems? What price on the health of millions of people. And because, as Randy pointed out, that pollution cloud from asia is drifting over and affecting American soil (Hawaii and Alaska) it is absolutely relevant that these emission controls be enforced on American manufacturing worldwide.
Are China and the other countries who are affected by American manufacturing on their soil culpable? Of course! They don't put in environmental regulations because they don't want to lose the business. Same as they don't put in and enforce child labor laws, occupational health and safety laws etc. They know they then couldn't compete for our "favors", that they might lose millions of jobs if American companies no longer found it cost effective to manufacture in their countries. But they are paying the price in polluted air and water, and the resultant long term health effects. I wonder to what degree the poor condition of the lungs of people in these areas, due to constant inhaling this high level of carcinogenic air pollutants and irritants, may be affecting their susceptibility to not just H5N1 but all sorts of respiratory illnesses that seem to be sweeping the Asian continent?
And you libs think GWB and the Republicans are bad. I am a rank amateur compared to this from Boxun.com
"The China Green Party has been conformed that Mr. Tan Kai, the founder of "Green Watch" (an environmental civil society group), still under detention by the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau (PSB) since 17th Oct.2005 in China . Then he and other five environmentalists tried to register an independent organisation for environmental protection. Such organisations which are really independent from party-authority have not been so far allowed to register and run in China , because their activities and influences could be seen as unstable factors jeopardising the authority of one-party-governance. To Chinese regime, the control and manipulation of leaders should be very critical to control and manipulate their organisations. Any civil leader should be controllable; otherwise, there is no chance for them to be active.
Beili from the CGP (China Green Party) have contacted Tan Kai's Lawyer Mr. Heping Li (Tel:) and Tan's father (tel: 13065769886). They have told BeiLi that the court granted the procurator's request for postponement of trial on 15 may 2005. Two months after , the local authorities even refuse to give further information but said seek for more evidence. Meanwhile, we have learned Tan Kai hasn't seen his doctor and his family since the arrestment."
These guys wanted to register so they could become the Sierra Club of China. Well they should. They reason they wanted to register was due to the fact that the Chinese government is dumping spent uranium into the tributaries of the Yangtze.
Well lets see I dont see any death camps, or immigration imprisonments, silenced dissidents or Bird Flu detainees here in the US. Damn, we Republicans need to get cracking so we can take over the government again. Everyone knows we do all of this kind of stuff when we are in power.
From a comment on The Oil Drum:
The Rising Dragon's Environmental Disaster
Revere, just read JMG3Y's article. Does lake pollution give rise to miscreant viruses? Meaning, if it can live in this shit its got to be hostile in its own right?
Randy: Viruses aren't really alive. They just reproduce. They don't need food and they don't grow. Some will remain replicable in very hostile surroundings and others won't. they are all different. But viruses don't appear spontaneously. They come from other viruses.
They come from other viruses produced by hijacked cells?
Thinlinna: Viruses just reproduce themselves. They don't always do it exactly which is how they (and we) evolve. But they don't come from nothing. They are a copy (perhaps imperfect) of another virus. Where the first virus came from is a matter of debate (I'm speaking scientific debate, not religious debate).
The American standards will never be adopted Mary because they are already less than Europe and the EU is having trouble compteting themselves with Asia. They are the high road but are also the reason they want to push the US so hard. 2 out of 3 and then forcing the Asians to comply as we are the market(s).
Its a sad thing, brilliant aerosol sunsets that are killing us slowly with carbon monoxide. Human cells revile CO and it might account for a huge proportion of the worlds heart problems.
We are a reactive society not proactive. Forget it and eal with what you can where you can. Then there is that bird flu clean up thing that I spoke of. Fascinating stuff. The weather may take of business too as neither the air or water circulates and without cleaning, volcanic gases will be trapped at the surface. Adaptability-Everyone wants everything to always remain the same.The ones that do adapt will survive and move on. Same with bird bug. Check this out when you have about 10 minutes.
http://arts.monash.edu.au/ges/who/haberle/elnino/elnino.html
I guess you don't mean that viruses reproduce themselves? To my knowledge they always need a cell they can hijack and then by the machinery of the hijacked cell viruses be reproduced.
Well, anyways, I guess we agree... :)
Thin: Yes, that's what I mean.
revere,
"It's one of the reasons I'm not afraid of China becoming an economic superpower. They are fouling their own nest which will do them in before they achieve dominance."
So true. And that is happening faster than you can imagine.
They have chosen, as Deng Xiaoping said, to "cross the river one stepping stone at a time". Well, they are getting to a point where the easiest stones have already been fully utilized. What's left are the most difficult and intractable problems.
It's like what they say with the 80/20 principle. It takes 20% of efforts to overcome the first 80% of the problems. The last 20% will take 80% of all the efforts.
I suspect those efforts will have to be qualitatively different, ie not just more of the same. Hard.
I read somewhere that one of the prevalent theories regarding where viruses come from is they are little snippets of DNA or RNA from existing cells that "escaped" somehow, and later went back to infect that same kind of cell from whence they originated. (From these origins, of course, they are later passed on as intact and specific viral particles from organism to organism.)I got the impression that these little nucleotide sequences, wrapped in some protective proteins from the cell, are therefore not recognized as enemies by those cells that they infect and hijack, circumventing some of the natural immune response such as interferon. This hypothesis would also explain why some are able to attach to the host cells' own DNA for periods of time (lysogenic cycle...eg HIV) and then later "break free" to undergo rapid replication and release (Lytic cycle), as well as how they are able to utilize a cell's specific machinery as well as they do.
MiH: Yes. It was either that way or perhaps the other way around? Viruses came first.
revere, please explain more. What would be the rationale in a hypothesis that viruses came first? :)
Thin: The idea is that RNA not only carries genetic information but also has enzymatic activity. Hence it could be self-replicating and those functions could later be segregated, some separated and some integrated. I'm not an expert on this, though. If someone else wants to weigh in, that would be grand. We'd all learn.