Ok, so here's a little about me so that you, the reader, can understand where I'm coming from a little bit. I'm an environmental science student and the things that really fascinate me are climate change, global ecology (how different biomes interact with each other and evolve over time) and the human dimensions of these changes. Now, it would be really easy to cherry pick the news and post all sorts of things that may or may not be related to actual climate change (like, for example, the heat wave in Hungary that's killing people right now) but that really wouldn't be intellectually honest because we don't know whether it's related or not. The jury's still out. The causal link isn't visible to us right now.
But there is a direct causal link between pollution and industrialization, and here is an interesting example of what happens when a country that is poised to host an upcoming Olympic summer games can't seem to face up to the fact that steel mills spew pollution, and cement creates greenhouse gases, and, well, in order to have massive Westernization, you need steel mills and cement.
In the last paragraph, we read that the Chinese government successfully blocked inclusion in a World Bank report of the number of people who died prematurely every year from air and water pollution. That number was 760,000. Now, why would they object? Was the figure inaccurate? If so, how inaccurate? What if it was exaggerated twice over? (That would be the best case scenario in terms of human life. ) That would mean that only 380,000 had died prematurely.
But what if it was too low, yet still so shocking that the Chinese government didn't want it released for fear people would investigate and find that the number was actually much higher? That would make the actual number to be something approaching a million. Even taking the number at face value, an entire San Francisco or Indianapolis worth of Chinese are dying every year, of what amounts to industrial poisoning.
You hear a lot of talk about not buying Chinese goods because of their human rights record, and that is a good and valid reason. But what about not buying so that the factories will have less reason to continue to pollute? Is it even possible to have such an impact?
I will be watching the Olympics, when they happen, not so much for the atheletes (sorry, sports fans!) but as a primer of PR spin. You can bet there will be plenty to go around.
2 comments:
The problem I see is that in the Western countries, we have the financial stability to address environmental problems (although it is still hard and in progress), whereas China and some other emerging capitalist/developed countries are still working on the infrastructure that we were working on 50 years ago. They therefore are not willing to relinquish profits (hence information, growth, and development) for environmental policies as the US currently is (more so than other countries).
It is interesting that the Western countries are only now (at their peak/regularity of capitalism) are considering and even becoming aware of environmental problems, and strangely this comes at a time when we are most equipped to deal with those problems (because we have enough money).
However, for many countries across the globe, these problems did not even exist until colonialism/imperialism/capitalism came into their country (tribe, region, etc.). Prior to globalization (which started in the 16th C. or so), everybody had clean water, clean air, good food, etc. What they did not have was all the commercial goods/services and ultimately luxury that a capitalist/exploitative society provides.
I do believe that we can have an impact through the choices we make. The problem with China is that although we cannot expect them to relinquish their industrialization, the context in which they industrialize is very different than the one during which Europe and the U.S. did. The process took some 200 years here and the effects were spread out in a world where populations was still sparse and most country had no industries at all. Now we live in a world where the U.S is using up 25% of global energy and the cause of the same amount of pollution; it is a country where the inhabitant on average consume twice as much water as... the Europeans for example and about 20 times more than many, many people. So when China enters this picture and is projected to account for another 25% of all pollution within a few years, the $1000000 question is: How long can the Earth sustain that level of consumption, and how long can we bare this amount of pollution?
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