WP/AP: China Risks Environmental Collapse, State Official Warns

[DeepModem Mom]

China Risks Environmental Collapse, State Official Warns
Associated Press
Sunday, March 12, 2006; Page A20


BEIJING, March 11 -- China must sharply improve environmental protection or it could face disaster following two decades of breakneck growth that have poisoned its air, water and soil, the country's top environmental official warned Saturday.

The director of the State Environmental Protection Administration said that more than half of China's 21,000 chemical companies are near the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which provide drinking water for tens of millions of people, and accidents could lead to "disastrous consequences."

"Facts have proved that prosperity at the expense of the environment is very superficial and very weak," Zhou Shengxian said at a news conference during the annual meeting of China's parliament. "It's only delaying disaster."

China's cities are among the world's smoggiest, and the government says its major rivers are badly polluted, leaving hundreds of millions of people without clean drinking water.

Protests have erupted throughout the country over farmers' complaints that uncontrolled factory discharges are ruining crops and poisoning water....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031101258.html?sub=AR

[Benhurst]

1. Gosh, I'd better stock up at Wal-Mart this afternoon.

:sarcasm:

[Rex]

2. Poisoning the land, air and water you say?

That's progress fer ya! :sarcasm:

[tanyev]

3. Learned western ways well, they have.

[stubtoe]

4. You can't eat money.

Wise man once said.

[NYC]

5. At least Zhou Shengxian makes sense.

..."Facts have proved that prosperity at the expense of the environment is very superficial and very weak," Zhou Shengxian said at a news conference during the annual meeting of China's parliament. "It's only delaying disaster."

I wonder if anyone will listen.

[oblivious]

6. It's more than a 'risk'. The disaster is already here.

I hate to sound apocalyptic, but it really is the end of the world. Some days the smog from southern China blows south over my green island just off Hong Kong and I can't see a mile on the ferry. It's horrific to realize that it's been 10 times worse than that for the past 10 years in places like Chonqing.

And they're just getting going, working towards US style car ownership (for 1.4 billion people??), more coal-fired power plants, more forests converted to industry, more farmland converted to luxury housing. It's just impossible.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Thanks for your on-the-scene perspective, oblivious --

you really bring an alarming reality to all this.

[lovuian]

8. I agree the alarm should have taken place 10 years ago

bureaucrats weren't interested in environment but in profits...

America would have been the same way except we had a environment movement that helped halt our destruction but alas Bush has encouraged global warming and now we are all in the same boat...

Unfortunately and yet good Everything is connected...

China and Russia are destroying the slave population that makes them powerful...

[wordpix2]

9. this is the end for pandas and their habitat. So sad