Several years ago Zhu Qihua, a property developer in Lanzhou, China, proposed flattening a 900-foot hill to vent the haze, smoke and dust that shrouded Lanzhou, an industrial city in Northwest China.
The city sits in a narrow Yellow River valley surrounded by mountains and hills, and was reputed to have the world's worst air. Zhu's solution was to level Daqinshan (Big Green Hill), to let out the bad air.
About 100 feet were removed from the top of Big Green Hill before the project was suspended because of questions regarding its cost and effectiveness.
Lanzhou is not an isolated case. Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. Nor is air pollution the only problem. "China has become a world leader in air and water pollution and land degradation, and a top contributor to some of the world's most vexing environmental problems, such as illegal timber trade, marine pollution and climate change," according to a devastating article in the September/October 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. "Water pollution and water scarcity are burdening the economy, rising levels of air pollution are endangering the health of millions of Chinese, and much of the country's land is rapidly turning into desert."
Along with some of its other harmful exports, China exports pollution. Of special interest to California is a US Environmental Protection Agency estimate that on some days, "25% of the particulates (soot) in the atmosphere in Los Angeles originated in China," the article states. "Scientists have also traced rising levels of mercury deposits on US soil back to coal-fired power plants and cement factories in China."
China will soon become the world's leading source of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, surpassing the US in overall emissions.
China's leaders are not unmindful of the need to clean house, but local officials "rarely heed Beijing's environmental mandates, preferring to concentrate their energies and resources advancing economic growth," the Foreign Affairs article said. Local officials "have few incentives to place a priority on environmental protection."
China is booming and it has a voracious and growing energy appetite. Coal provides about 70% of its energy needs but is it eyeing oil resources around the world. "Some 14,000 new cars hit China's roads each day," the Foreign Affairs article notes. "By 2020, China is expected to have 130 million cars, and by 2050 - or perhaps as early as 2040 -it is expected to have even more cars than the United States."
But China also is an environmental cesspool. Turning the environmental situation in China around "will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms," the article states. Without such measures, China "will suffer stagnation or regression."
Leave a comment