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

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