We Speak For Earth
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mohandasgandhi Mohandas Gandhi -
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perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Coal consumption in China alone now accounts for 47% of global coal consumption. That’s roughly 3.8 billion tons. Since 2000, China has accounted for 2.3 billion tons, or 82%, of the 2.9 billion ton growth in global coal demands.
Kelly McParland: China is choking on its environmental complacency
It’s not very nice to enjoy other people’s misery, but when it comes to smog in China a certain schadenfreude sets in.
China has been most forthright in criticizing other countries for failing to pay adequate attention to the environment , while continuing to burn ever-increasing amounts of coal and letting the result turn the atmosphere into a floating gray mass of pollutants that choke the population.
The Chinese capital is going through another air emergency at the moment, and this one is setting record levels. According to the World Health Organization, a “safe” level of PM2.5 particles — tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs — is 25 micrograms per cubic metre. On Saturday, levels in Beijing hit 600, and perhaps as high as 900. That’s between 24 and 36 times the “safe level.” Beijing is now the modern equivalent of Victorian London, whose famous “fog” was actually smog caused by coal dust that was disastrous for the health of Londoners.
We’ve all heard about land developers seizing desired property from residents in China, especially in the last few months. Recently, some developers in Hebei province sent thugs to chase Shen Jianzhong and his family off their land.
“It was only after they forced open the door, threw Shen’s wife to the ground and began to beat her that they learned the 38-year-old Shen and his 18-year-old son are kung fu masters.
“I take Bruce Lee very seriously,” said Shen in a telephone interview a month after the incident.
Shen says he does not recall exactly what happened during the fight, but an eight-minute video of the aftermath shows seven of the hired hands piled in a motionless heap in Shen’s doorway. Blood pools around the cheek of one; another lies halfway through the doorway, crumpled on the curb. Survivors mill about unsteadily on the street, glaring at the camera…
Land confiscation is one of the most contentious political issues in China and accounts for many of the mass demonstrations that occur with regularity across the country. A report by Amnesty International this year estimated that confiscations have occurred in 43% of Chinese villages in 15 years.”
I think we can all agree that the land seizures have gotten seriously out of control in China, but at least the badassery is through the roof.
Rice paddies next to a village in China
Sweeping environmental policies come with hidden challenges – not only striving to achieve sustainability and benefit the environment – but over time ensuring the program itself can endure.
Scientists at Michigan State University and their colleagues in China are examining China’s massive Grain to Green Program (GTGP) – an effort to persuade farmers to return cropland to forest through financial incentives. Their results were reported in this week’s journal Ecological Indicators.
The goal – developing a unique targeted approach that applies the combination of environmental sciences and social sciences to get a full picture of how policy really is working, and how it can grow stronger. It’s important not only to offer insight to China as it continues to shape it’s Grain to Green Program, but also across the world as governments strive to protect their environment while enabling people to thrive.
By some measurements, the GTGP has been enormously successful as it is vast. In its 12 years it has invested more than 200 billion yuan (about $32 billion U.S.) to persuade more than 120 million farmers in 32 million households to return 8.8 million hectares of cropland to forest and grassland.
The question addressed by Andrés Viña, assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife, Jianguo “Jack” Liu, director of MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS) and their collaborators is: is it the right land being enrolled in the program, and will farmers remain committed to the program, or will they eventually decide they’re better off farming?
Further reading:
Inside the Controversial Foxconn Factory
In case you don’t remember, Foxconn is where Apple products are made in China, and where, a few years ago, they had to put up nets to keep employees from jumping out the windows.
James Fallows visits the factory and finds that much has changed in Chinese factories since the first images of deplorable sweatshop conditions reached the Western world years ago.
Cities of the Future: Made in China
From modular skyscrapers to electric cars, from dreamier environmental ideas like traffic-jumping busses to more realistic goals like cleaner, safer nuclear energy, China is making much progress in greening cities—an area where the West is seriously lagging.
Chinese building commissions awarded to foreign architects are almost always environmentally friendly and push green boundaries with photovoltaic window shades and home-grown energy generated by in-house wind turbines.
Local architects like Wang Shu use recycled materials to build sustainable college campuses and museums on the cheap.
Additionally, China hopes to roll out a growing fleet of electric taxis, becoming the world leader in electric vehicles.
It’s easy to dismiss China as an environmental disaster when you consider that the majority of their energy is still generated by coal, and pollution kills thousands of people every year, but China is in a unique position to become a leader in environmental innovation and green technology because of its centrally planned economy and powerful central government. So if we want to see what a city of the future will look like, we should look to China and follow their lead.
This is what I’m saying, though.
Isn’t China’s environmental politics fascinating?
(Source: US Energy Information Administration)
China is pushing to roll out more and more electric cars. Awesome, right? But the majority of China’s electricity is still generated by coal. Do the environmental costs therefore outweigh the benefits, or is it the thought that counts?
China Unveils Astronaut Crew, 1st Female Spaceflyer, for Saturday Launch
China has unveiled the three-person crew for its first manned docking spaceflight set to launch Saturday (June 16) — a mission that will send the country’s first female astronaut into orbit in the process.
The crew of China’s Shenzhou 9 space docking mission met reporters today (June 15) at the country’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center ahead of Saturday’s planned launch at 6:37 p.m. local time (6:37 a.m. EDT or 1037 GMT). The three astronauts, or taikonauts as China’s spaceflyers are known, include male crewmembers Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang and the country’s first woman to fly in space: the 34-year-old Liu Yang.
“I am grateful to the motherland and the people,” Liu Yang said in a press conference according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. “I feel honored to fly into space on behalf of hundreds of millions of female Chinese citizens.”
rtnt:
The Human Cost of the iPad
In the second of a New York Times series about the global tech industry, Charless Duhigg and David Barboza explore the often brutal working conditions at the factories where some of America’s most iconic high-tech devices are made.
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.
For this video work, young Chinese artist Zhang Liaoyuan has built three scenes, a restaurant, a supermarket and a library. All of a sudden, a great inrush of water occurs (like the one that happened inside of the luxurious submerged passenger boat Titanic). While the inundation is happening within the 3 scenes, people are behaving in an ordinary manner, seeming to not notice the water. The work is supposed to be a comment on modern society, as if we are like those passengers of the Titanic, but the actors in Zhang’s work remain calm, as if to say our society is trying to pretend that those life-threatening leaks in our world do not exist.
