The Cost of Rapid Development
Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. Now the
Chinese government has embarked on a comprehensive plan to find the
best and fastest way to clean up the mess left behind after the
country's gross domestic product annual growth rate hit 11.4 percent.
China's economy has grown tenfold since 1978 with its focus on
economic development at breakneck speed leading to widespread
environmental degradation.
China watchers told Daily Planet Media that what the country has gone
through in industrialization over the past 20 years would take many
developing countries over one hundred years to complete.
Today China is facing up the reality that the scale and scope of
pollution has outpaced what has occurred anywhere in the western
world, and that its environmental woes will soon hurt its domestic
economy.
The damage to the ecosystem costs China about 9 percent of its GDP,
according to the United Nations Development Program. China is
suffering from the twin problems of water shortage and water
pollution. Over a third of the country's population lacks access to
clean drinking water.
China has a huge dam-building program with over twenty-five thousand
dams nationwide, but the dams are a high cost to construct and take
away valuable farmland and cause ecological damage as well as forcing
the migration of millions of people, according Jennifer Turner,
director of the China Environment Forum.
Desertification in China has lead to the loss of about 5,800 square
miles of grasslands every year with The Worldwatch Institute observing
that excessive farm cultivation, particularly overgrazing, is one of
the leading causes of desertification.
People are becoming more concerned about environmental and land
degradation. The demonstration last May by citizens in Chengdu against
the construction of a petrochemical factory and an oil refinery was a
visible sign that people power is still a potent force that doesn't go
unnoticed by the CCP government.
The State of the Planet
CARBON CONFUSION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjfxtUMY0x4
posted to ClimateConcern
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