Letters to the Editor
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The PRC has dragged several hundred million people out of penury in only 20 years
I understand, and so do they, that it's not all aromatherapy, and magical unicorns for everyone but it's pretty damned impressive. Easy for the editorial staff of Salondotcom in San Fran to pout and scream that people living on $2500/year should be grateful to live at that level forever lest they corrupt Mother Earth and perish the thought that any more Chinese should ever not have to live in the same squalorous shack as their hogs because that would mean they're all big bad evil capitalists.
No one, and let me repeat that, NO ONE will do thing one about the environment when their own people need those precious resources to live and eat and develop. If you and a billion of your neighbors were poor, even by 19th Century standards and you watched your government toss all their money into Western Green Friendly projects with a payback in maybe 30 years, I bet you'd be pretty angry. Or maybe you'd just be too poor and hungry to care either way.
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Did any of you live in China 30 years ago
China and it's Government has many faults. There is no question of that, but to accuse the Chinese of somehow stupidly choosing this path of development betrays a clear lack of understanding of what life was like in china 20, 30, 40 years ago. My parents lived through the rations, and limited career choices in the cities of Shanghai and Kunming. There's no question the life of the average chinese person is far better today than it was 30 years ago.
The problem with China ultimately is a problem of population. The simple fact is more people = more environmental impact. Of course China's laws limiting the number of children is not so popular either....
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@Electro Robot
I'm curious to see your sources for your implication that earth-friendly businesses need a significantly longer payback time.
I'm particularly interested to see if those sources include all start-up and early operational costs for traditional businesses, or just the costs to the investors. Making an investment look like it pays off quickly is much easier to do as long as many costs -- such as environmental damage and resulting rising health costs, etc -- can be "externalized" onto the locals and their families and neighbors.
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From here to there,
Greetings
Sorry I don't buy the constant apoligia, the excuses..
The modern Chinese oligarchy merely continues a sad exploitive trend, the warlord propers and the rest, the peasants, are hungry.
Getting from here to there does not have to be zero-sum, China decided that it was easy and quick and properous for the sons and daughters of the elites to play along.
The super rich of Shanghai, the billionaires raising one huge ego driven building after another of course see only the plus side.
There were always other paths, other methods that would have brought the peasants into the light as well but...
It was really not the priority of the Elites, nothing more or less. Given their history it is impossible to believe that they did not know BETTER!
Enjoy the journey
WarLord
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Culture Revolution, Great Leap Forward...
China tried it's hand at different approach towards development - Communism and the Great Leap Forward. What did that lead? Mass starvation. Punishing the elites? They did that too. The Cultural Revolution. That worked great as well. The fact is that it's just not that simple for any nation to develop and progress, especially a population as large as that of China.
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What goes up can come down, no?
How about blowing up the billion-bag factory & restoring the land to agricultural use? Oops we're sorry for the immense blight we inflicted on you folks, here lets grow some crops instead. We're talking about a country that can move mountains if it wants to bad enough.
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bearpaw1
Higher sunk costs = longer ROI, it's axiomatic. If it were not, everyone would do it. Trust me, Progress energy, Duke power, Alcoa are not resisting going green for the hell of it. We here in the US have smokestack scrubbers not because it's a nice thing to do but because the EPA says they have to have them. And the concept of retrofitting grees tech on top of old tech is fantastically expensive. Sorry but that's just the real world. Green proponents seem to be constantly amazed that this is the case and resist all attempts at incremental improvements.
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@Askdong
Some people are turning this comment board into an emotional debate about overgeneralized stereotypes of China.
But that is not the point.
China is part of the world. Chinese progress has to be sustainable and use methods that are tolerable to the rest of the world. Otherwise, it won't last. This is equally true for every other society on earth, obviously.
It would be foolish in the extreme to argue that China in its present state is a worse per capita polluter than the US, Australia, or even other rich countries.
This article could have been written about any country. The same false dichotomy comes up everywhere - "environment versus economy". People who think their short term interest lie in polluting always resort to it. Why do you think it was on Al Jazeera? Because that outlet is funded by middle eastern oil money. They want China to burn a lot of oil and produce a lot of petrochemical plastic as it develops.
China does not have the "luxury" of indulging in the kind of environmental degradation that countries like the United States did during their development, or do right now. The global environment literally will not sustain human life if societies like India and China choose the exact same methods of development that the west chose 100 years and more ago.
On the other hand, China does have the far more valuable luxury of being able to learn from the earlier mistakes of others, and of developing in an era of far more sophisticated technology.
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Where is the help?
The supply of sustainable goods will not be there until there is a demand for it. Now, most people still demand cheap goods regardless of the longterm costs.
If sustainability is so important to you, do you buy sustainably produced products? Do you call your congressional representatives to ask them to extend US technologies to China? Do you try to decrease your ecological footprint?
Until the more developed countries like US cuts consumption and pollution, less developed countries would say that US is hypocritical. US needs to lead by example. I agree that environmental damage would cost way more than the current nominal savings. But it's easy to sit in US and write comments on a website. Will you teach sustainability in China and India? Will you roll up your sleeves and help bring people out of poverty using sustainable business practices? Until people are no longer trying to make a decent living, they will not have the time or energy to read it.
Currently, there is no definite answer on the relationship between sustainability and the triple bottom line (people, profit, environment). Dr. Dorathy Paun at University of Washington is currently analyzing a set of data from Dr. Morhart with her graduate students regarding that particular issue.
http://courses.washington.edu/sustains/
Zhu Zhu