We’ll be seeing plenty of China on our TV screens in the next little while, as long they don’t give us too many long shots. No matter how spectacular the Olympic opening ceremony, if we can see it, I think the abiding image from the Games for me will be the astonishing soup of pollution. I can’t wrap my mind around the kind of hubris and single-minded neglect that could produce such a mess. Rick Birch talking on local radio said the Chinese Government had assured everyone a couple of years ago that the weather would be fine for the opening ceremony, the weather apparently being subject to government will. Hence no need for a plan B in case it rains. Rick says you always have a plan B in case it rains, but not this time.
Similarly, we are assured that the atmosphere would be OK. China has gone to enormous lengths to showcase these games. I understand they have temporarily diverted water about 150k to make sure the city has enough to the deprivation of other parts of the country. But the air pollution has not conformed with government requirements. Hence the Australian team cancelled its traditional outdoor barbecue, apparently because the air might affect the meat!
The Australian Financial Review last Friday in their Review section republished Jacques Leslie’s cover story in the February edition of Mother Jones entitled The Last Empire: China’s Pollution Problem Goes Global. It’s over 9000 words, but it’s well worth a look.
Leslie tells of Mao’s assault on the environment when he launched the “backyard furnace” campaign. Some 90 million peasants set up mini steel smelters stripping 10% of China’s trees within a few months to fire them in order to produce unusable steel. Mao also launched the “Kill the Four Pests Campaign” resulting in the mass killing of sparrows followed by a great locust plague. The consequent harvest failure and famine saw between 30 and 50 million Chinese die, according to Leslie.
Yet the Mao era’s ecological devastation pales next to that of China’s current industrialization. A fourth of the country is now desert. More than three-fourths of its forests have disappeared. Acid rain falls on a third of China’s landmass, tainting soil, water, and food. Excessive use of groundwater has caused land to sink in at least 96 Chinese cities, producing an estimated $12.9 billion in economic losses in Shanghai alone. Each year, uncontrollable underground fires, sometimes triggered by lightning and mining accidents, consume 200 million tons of coal, contributing massively to global warming. A miasma of lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and other elements of coal-burning and car exhaust hovers over most Chinese cities; of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are Chinese.
The government estimates that 400,000 people die prematurely from respiratory illnesses each year, and health care costs for premature death and disability related to air pollution is estimated at up to 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Four-fifths of the length of China’s rivers are too polluted for fish. Half the population—600 or 700 million people—drinks water contaminated with animal and human waste. Into Asia’s longest river, the Yangtze, the nation annually dumps a billion tons of untreated sewage; some scientists fear the river will die within a few years. Drained by cities and factories all over northern China, the Yellow River, whose cataclysmic floods earned it a reputation as the world’s most dangerous natural feature, now flows to its mouth feebly, if at all. China generates a third of the world’s garbage, most of which goes untreated. Meanwhile, roughly 70 percent of the world’s discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.
Robert Merkel told us last year of an environmental disaster that killed 750,000 Chinese. The Chinese government persuaded the World Bank to suppress the story because it could cause social unrest. It seems their fears were justified. Leslie tells us:
Though government-run and heavily censored, the English-language China Daily has reported that pollution problems caused 50,000 disputes and protests throughout China in 2005. (See “The People’s Revolution”.)
If the impact of this environmental destruction was contained within their borders it would be bad enough. But it’s not.
Enthusiasm for traditional Chinese medicine, including its alleged aphrodisiacs, is causing huge declines in populations of hundreds of animals hunted for their organs—including tigers, pangolins, musk deer, sea horses, and sea dragons. Seeking oil, timber, gold, copper, cobalt, uranium, and other natural resources, China is building massive roads, bridges, and dams throughout Africa, often disregarding international environmental and social standards.
Chinese consumption of timber goes far beyond the 45 billion disposable chopsticks produced each year.
At one end are the consumers in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China itself, who are mostly oblivious to the social and environmental destruction left by the Chinese-made furniture, plywood, moldings, and flooring they buy.
At the other end are the wood suppliers, almost all poor countries with weak or corrupt law enforcement and a flourishing trade in illegal lumber. Among China’s leading wood importers, Thailand and the Philippines have already been stripped of their natural forests; Indonesia and Burma are projected to lose theirs within a decade. Papua New Guinea’s will succumb within 16 years, and the vast forests of the Russian Far East will survive no more than two decades. Even so, Forest Trends, a Washington-based nonprofit, estimates that China’s wood imports will probably double over the next decade. Chinese manufacturers are already developing replacement sources in Africa, and South America’s forests are under threat for a different reason: China’s growing consumption of pork and chicken is fed by soybeans grown on newly cleared Amazonian land; by one estimate, 30 percent of the jungle could eventually be transformed into soybean fields.
In the middle is China, the world’s workshop, now both the planet’s leading wood importer and exporter, supplying more than 30 percent of the international furniture trade.
Yet Leslie tells us that China itself uses 90% of the wood products it makes. And it has hardly begun. The middle class, numbering something less than 100 million is projected to reach 700 million by 2020. China’s per capita consumption of paper is a mere eighth of that of the US.
It seems that China is the world’s leading importer of illegal logs. Half of the wood from Siberia is illegal and fires are set in the forests because damaged timber can then be cut. Up to 80% of Indonesian logging is thought to be illegal.
All of China’s rivers are in trouble and of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, 16 are Chinese.
The haze that blots out Beijing at any given time may not be from industrial pollution, it could be dust.
Dust storms that now debilitate Beijing appear in records from as long ago as the 1200s, but they occurred less than once a year on average then; today they come at least 20 times a year.
When agriculture was de-collectivised trees were cut down on the unstable western grazing lands to build fences. Now with endemic overgrazing the desert is advancing.
The dust does not stop at the border but sweeps over Korea, Taiwan and Japan to the USA. A thick haze has been known as far east as Denver. The dust itself has reached as far as the Canary Islands off Africa.
Industrial pollution too sweeps eastwards. A peer-reviewed study in 2004 found that 36% of the man-made mercury settling on the US came from Asia. In California the legal pollution limit is 12 micrograms per cubic metre of air. Now 4-6 micrograms is being supplied by Asia.
Already climate change is affecting China. The already arid north is drying out further. The glaciers are melting (Greenpeace reckons 80% could disappear by 2035), floods and deluges have increased in the south.
Leslie believes the problem is that China, rather than find its own path is seeking to copy the West. Cars, for example, are projected to increase from 33 million to 130 million by 2020. And they won’t be diverted from their path while we maintain the lifestyle we do. Leslie says that Chinese per capita income is still less than 10th of that of the US. To achieve parity would require several planets worth of resources.
When China joined the World Trade Organisation the show was run by the ‘Quad’ – the US, the EU, Japan and Canada. At the recent WTO meeting Australia displaced Canada in the so-called G7 caucus presumably because of its leadership of the Cairns Group. India, China and Brazil were added.
Once you could say that if you wanted to address a problem of real importance in the world you needed the US there. You might not get much done with them but you couldn’t leave them out. I think in the future China, India and Brazil will similarly need to be there when important matters have to be addressed, especially in relation to global warming and the environment generally. Russia was missing because it’s not a member of the WTO. Africa has no single country near the top of the pecking order.
And so we are moving towards a multi-polar world, but given the environmental track record of the major powers the prospects for concerted action on anything don’t look all that flash.
It is more than a little interesting to contemplate what could bring about the necessary attitudinal and value changes to seriously address climate change. Perhaps when they twig to the threat of sea level change it might concentrate the mind. Some of the great powers, especially China, seem quite vulnerable:
(Image from slide 46 from Hansen’s Iowa Coal testimony – large pdf)
Certainly preaching at them while we continue our own profligate consumption of resources won’t do the trick.
Excellent post Brian, thanks for that. Starts to put things in perspective…
By coincidence a friend mentioned the Jacques Leslie article to me yesterday and I was going to search it out. So thanks very much for the link.
Will look forward to reading your post in more detail later.
Global effects indeed.
Eastward drift towards over the Pacific and North America, somewhat reminiscent of the pollution load Scandinavia copped from Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution from their dark satanic mills.
Also CO2 and other gases persist for decades, so they affect all of us, not only the Northernhemisphereans. Watch the outdoor smog, think about our own air quality standards and how well we meet them, and think about the invisible gases too.
cheers
>>”I can’t wrap my mind around the kind of hubris and single-minded neglect that could produce such a mess”
I dunno, but it strikes me that our own effort in getting ourselves in a position where we are probably gonna have to turn what was a major river system, with flows out, into a pond, with none, is up there in the single minded neglect and hubris stakes, sort of.
I’m not in any way having a go, or denying agreement with the post, I’m just saying….
Eve, meet apple; Pandora meet box: we’re an appalling species really, the sooner the planet is done with us, and moves on, the better.
Great post Brian. Excuse me while I slit my throat.
This is a China story at GCC from a couple of years ago (April 2006) that just blew me away…
carbonsink, on cars, the other day I heard that India would employ 26 million people in the auto mf industry by 2020. Not sure of the pedigree of the information, but it’s very unsettling.
Gotta go now. I’ll check in again tonight.
At the end of 2004 I took advantage of a sale at Allen’s Music to purchase a Fender acoustic guitar. When I looked through the hole in the middle at the manufacturer’s label, there were those words “Made in China”, signalling that my shiny new axe had probably been produced in socially and ecologically unsustainable ways.
I have since learned that Gibson and Martin guitars are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and should therefore be the instruments of choice for environmentally conscious pickers.
OK, colour me terrified now.
I was in Shanghai a few weeks ago, and the pollution was palpable. I really felt after the 2 1/2 days we were there that if I’d been there any longer I would’ve been getting seriously ill. I just can’t imagine those international athletes doing daily strenuous work in those conditions.
I’ve noticed that the Olympics have seemingly allowed for a bit of suspect almost-racism to enter the public discource around China recently. Clearly an amazing analysis like this is important and in no way racist; but I wonder about the general jokes about pollution and eating of weird food and the like – yes, they do eat weird stuff, I can attest to that. But the Chinese man and woman on the street are just people. On the street. Breathing in the fumes produced by their unchecked runaway industry.
Nice.
Anyway, that’s a bit off-topic.
After being in Beijing last year, what strikes me is that the people I talked to (admittedly, English-speaking students and academics and consequently quite privileged by Chinese standards) all know that the pollution is appalling and dangerous, and they want it cleaned up.
Oh, look on the bright side; the global dimming from all that atmospheric dust might mitigate against global warming.
RF: that’s something Brian’s posted on a number of times here on LP.
Basically, at the moment the dust is counteracting the effects of the CO2 emitted from China’s power plants. However, the dust will probably reach saturation point in a few years time, both as a result of it “naturally” falling out of the atmosphere, and China’s efforts to clean up its local pollution.
When that occurs, the implications for global temperatures are not pretty.
The pollution in Beijing, the showplace, is one thing. Now picture what it’s like in the places foreigners don’t go (a friend of mine did aid work in a poor Chinese province for years).
The only explanation I can think of for the lack of public health and safety enforcement is that this is a country with a vested interest in reducing its population.
Good point, Chookie. The pollution in Xi’an was considerably worse than Beijing when I was there, to the point where it did make me feel rather ill.
A problem with dust and smog is that it’s relatively easy to fix up (well compared to closing down all the power stations) and it washes out of the air in only weeks or months. If we clean it up too quickly we’ll get a big spike in climate change!
You’ve got to remember that China constitutes about 20% of the population of the world, and their average population density is enormous, compared to Australia, or the US, etc. Of course they produce far more pollution than we do, and it’s concentrated over a smaller area. But, yes, that does mean that they have 20% of the world’s responsibility to try and mitigate pollution.
Can you really blame China, just because they have 20% of the world’s population?
Sure, it’s a problem, but what can they do to stop it? They’re in the process of industrialisation, and they’re determined, for example, to give all the Chinese people access to electricity. Who are we to suggest that they can’t have access to electricity? They’re pushing ahead with efforts to use plenty of nuclear power and hydroelectricity, displacing the use of coal – in that sense, they put Australia to shame.
Of course, most of the rest of the developed world effectively outsources their pollution from manufacturing to China.
For all of us who have ever bought manufactured items from Chinese factories, because they’re a bit cheaper than the Australian or European (or whatever) alternatives, then that’s contributing to that problem. If you want to help mitigate that, then try not to demand cheaper Chinese manufacturing, and pay a little more for the alternatives.
Apparently cancer rates in industrialised China are through the roof. It’s not just air pollution, but uncontrolled discharge of toxic waste. Then there’s the effect on people with respiratory diseases like asthma. You can imagine, but you don’t have to imagine – every visitor to China comes back with the same stories.
The value of one western polluting farts maybe like, ten or more from China. Yep look at your own backyard me thinks.
Why not? Countries with high per capita emissions are constantly berated for their over-consumption. Why shouldn’t countries that have over-populated get a serve?
After all, as Nicholas Stern notes: Key Elements of a Global Deal, p. 3 http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/granthamInstitute/publications/KeyElementsOfAGlobalDeal_30Apr08.pdf
Note: That could be 10.6 billion out of world population of 12 billion if UN forecasts are correct: “UN Predicts 12 Billion if Family Planning Falters” http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43156
Ross Garnaut notes that: Draft Report, p. 28 http://www.garnautreview.org.au/CA25734E0016A131/WebObj/GarnautClimateChangeReview-DraftReport-Ch2/$File/Garnaut%20Climate%20Change%20Review%20-%20Draft%20Report%20-%20Ch%202.pdf
But don’t worry about the effects of all that extra “human output and consumption”. According to Garnaut, everything will be fine, even “the expansion of education and choice for women” is assured. (I’m looking forward to that happening throughout the Middle-east, Africa etc…)
My concern is whether the environment can survive human population growth of “nearly three billion” to nine billion (or maybe even 12 billion?) before all the woes of society are magically sorted by 2080…
Dream on…
Perhaps if back in Rio in 1992 the architects of our current climate change agreement hadn’t focused simply on fossil fuel emissions in developed countries, and hadn’t excluded consideration of vital issues such as the impact of population growth and deforestation, we wouldn’t be in the deep doo doo we’re in now. (Which I’ve already argued here http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/09/penny-peter-marn-and-the-professor/ – posts 41 and 42 )
Let’s hope they do a better job in Copenhagen in 2009.
Watching the opening propaganda ceremony??
“The little children chant, in the hope that the land will turn green again…. Chinese children have the same hopes and dreams that we do…. the sparrows are falling from the sky, they sing…. the ice caps are melting…. a message of global warming.”
Oh, dear.
Wasn’t the world created for people to exploit? Or was that only some people?
You’re being disingenuous zorronsky? God alone knows what the world was created for. You know that. Reminds me of W.H Auden: We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.
Terrible, terrible post. What a litany of disaster. I wonder how many Chinese lives have been lost to stage the ‘games’ and for the benefit of China ‘looking’ good. (Which it clearly doesn’t, indeed nothing’s clear at all). Just another woeful case of . . . Vanity, vanity all is but . . .etc
The temporary diversion of water is enough to make life difficult, if not seriously so–for how many millions?
Who’s to say what to do? But the greatest communist country in the world is surely having the last laugh as the rest of us buy its crappy goods en masse. There’d hardly be a household on the planet that can claim to be completely devoid of goods ‘Made in China’. (Unless of course you’re obsessed about avoiding them, but to do so must mean you’re either rich or very spartan.)
The only upside to this dire situation is that should the Chinese regime ever decide to seriously address the shit in their own nest, we can rest assured that it will happen–for the good of Chinah. At the moment however, they seem like the rest of us gripped by fear and greed. No doubt some of us will be telling them what is the good of China. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone (and kill the capitalist monster?) Not holding my breath and gladly not in Beijing and having to.
(1) I was reading in a recent New Scientists that some economists calculated that 30% of China’s emissions are to produce manufactured goods for “the west”.
So, China could cut 30% of it’s emissions by NOT exporting stuff to the west, and most western countries no longer have the means to manufacture replacement items.
So, those complaining about pollution in China can do something merely by curing themselves of affluenza and the “need” for the latest gizmo.
Global warming and capitalism solved with the same (in)action?
(2) On your point about the (short term) weather being subject to government will, it’s worth remembering that King Canute/Knut ordered back the tide to prove to his panderers that there are some things even divinely-ordained kings can’t do
(3) Recent studies have shown that sea-level rises take some time to flow around. Apparently, even if the Greenland glaciers all melted tomorrow, it’d take a few decades for this to contribute to any significant change in the Indian or Pacific oceans because it would be trapped in the Atlantics by the way surface currents work around tips of South Am and Africa. Trapping the rises to the North Atlantic would be poetic justice.
Dave, that last point is right AFAIK. If Antarctica melted it would take even longer to get past the currents that flow around the world to the south of us.
No comment needed on King Canute.
I think the problem is that in many instances now we buy Chinese goods or nothing. And I wouldn’t be totally confident in any assurances given me by The Forest Stewardship Council about my guitar if I was Paul N (see comment 6). According to the article there is a racket going on through Malaysia whereby illegal logs are given false certificates.
A few years ago we added a deck to the house, as you do in Brisvegas, and arranged for French doors to be installed from our dining room to match the silky oak paneling which was cut from Queensland timbers in the 1930s. We found after installation that the timber came from Borneo and was probably home to some orangutan before it was cut. I wonder whether there was any other option. It’s almost impossible for private consumers to research these things.
I have just come home from a shopping trip in which I bought about 1/2 a dozen knitted tops -end of season and heavily discounted- and I bet without looking that they were all probably made in China. *sign* So easy for me to recognise the problem, yet hard to change my ways. I saw a program about an US couple who decided to live ‘China free’ for a year. They gave it up after the 12 months, they found it simply too difficult to maintain.
Luke at 14, I think we do need to blame China for what has gone on, just as we should blame Brazil in the last instance for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and us for the destruction of the Coorong.
We can also blame the World trade Organisation and free traders generally for paying insufficient attention to labour practices and environmental outcomes.
I think I forgot to mention that 80% of the rivers by length now are too polluted to contain fish, thus destroying a food source and a cultural practice as well as the welfare of the fish.
The toxicity of the environment is causing direct harm to the people. The State has to take responsibility for preventing this.
More generally Virginia Trioli had an interesting chat with John Pomfret on Lateline the other night. Pomfret thinks that in the long run having the Olympics will be good for the Chinese and that pressure for political change will coalesce around environmental issues.
Beijing Smog Melting Canada’s Arctic?
Peak Energy links with us and links to a Renewable energy World article on the impressive renewable energy features incorporated into the Games venue design.
It seems that there is an upside to Chinese smog for their farmers. The smog increases rice yields and reduces methane emissions by up to 25%.
Of course this means more downside when they finally decide to clean up the mess, as inevitably they will.