[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by krashkart

I wonder how long it will be before China realizes its own Love Canal.

Do you mean Love Canal, the industrial waste incident, or Love Canal, the public/private PR nightmare?

In the case of the former, China has already done far worse, and in many places. The pictures the OP listed should attest somewhat to that, but there are thousands of other incidents of varying severity not shown, and that's not including the ones the Chinese haven't released records for.

China has also had to deal with "Love Canal" incidents in the PR sense, but those have all been centered in or around the Special Economic Zones. It is only there that people have the standard of living needed to care about such things. The incidents have not been widely publicized, and where they were, not much attention was drawn to any particular incident, so widespread were the damages. Environmental catastrophe is not the notable exception that is unedningly scrutinized in China as it is in nations with greater freedom. In most of China, people simply cannot afford to care, and even if they did, they have no power to do anything about it.

At the moment, China is a struggling giant attempting to break free of the chains that tether it to the second and third worlds. It is made weak by virtue of the fact that the CCP has been so recalcitrant in releasing control, and that weakness will ensure a slow transition through the so-called "Kuznet's Curve".

For those that don't know, the Kuznet's curve is a kind of upside-down U-curve on a graph whose axes are economic development(X) and environmental impact(Y). Some nations are simply too poor to pollute. They have no industry worth mentioning and where they do have industry the local environment is perfectly capable of handling the pollution through natural processes. We find these nations in the lower-left corner of the graph.

In the middle of the graph we find rapidly developing nations like China. Their pollution output is tremendous because while they are wealthy enough to industrialize, they (or rather, the people comprising such nations) are still too poor to worry about ecological consequences. It is at this point that sheer desire for economic survival trumps all other concerns. Every Western nation with any industrial background has undergone this phase of the curve. Soviet nations got stuck in the middle because their government type would not permit further development.

In the lower right-hand corner of the graph we can find wealthy, developed nations. These nations are prosperous enough to care about the environment and have the resources to do something about it. They have all gone through the entire Kuznet's Curve (with the exception of nations with a preponderance of marketable resources relative to the population) As time goes on, these nations will reduce their environmental impact because people can spare enough to afford to care about the environment in which they live. They gradually change from heavy industry to mechanized industry and then to automated industry or away from industry altogether, depending upon the market circumstances, and move on to the next phase of economic and human development. While the US uses a tremendous amount of energy, it also creates markets and products that reduce reliance upon manufactured goods whilst emphasizing environmental well-being. Just look around you. Companies everywhere emphasize "green" this and "green" that, regardless of the fact that "green" has a tendency to waste more energy and be less productive than simply "modern". In truth, most companies aren't intending to be "green" at all, they just want to be efficient, and efficiency requires appeal to the consumer and profitable business policy. As such, they make themselves more efficient and/or toss the occasional inefficient "green" policy or product or advertising campaign out so people will view them and their products in a positive light. Whatever, it works.

China is today's big polluter. India will probably be next, though it may move even more slowly through the curve, by virtue of its regimented extragovernmental class structure and sorry excuse for anything resembling a functional socialist domestic policy unless there is some radical change.

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

And don't forget that pollution, along with everyone elses, is spreading over the planet. What I find sad is when the west was polluting to that extent, the repurcusions were not understood well, or at all. This pollution is being done with the knowledge of the harm created.

I disagree, this pollution is generally not being done with the knowledge of the harm created. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the modern world is quick to blame industry for pollution, but they rarely stop and ask themselves what causes these scapegoats to pollute. The answer is, of course, our own selves. We create pollution by demanding goods and services at a price we are willing to pay. If an industry were to go out of its way to produce a "green" product, few of us would buy it, and the product would likely be worse for the environment, anyway.

Case-in-point, organic foods. Organic foods are, in every way, bona-fide stupid. They waste tremendous amounts of resources and land that products grown using modern agricultural techniques would not, and they are no better than GM or irradiated foods in terms of nutritional value, though they are more likely to be contaminated with bacteria from organic fertilizer. They are also more expensive because they take such a tremendous amount of investiture of time and energy to produce. Where they are not more expensive (almost never in the US, as most organic produce comes form US farms), they come at the cost of human suffering.
Think about it. Producers who use truly organic methods in most of the world often can't produce enough to feed their own families, let alone sell. They destroy millions of acres of "natural" whatever every year in an ongoing attempt to find land fertile enough to boost their pathetic output, and even when they do find such land, their product is often beset by disease or parasites. Yet consumers buy "natural" foods because they are "green" or "organic" or "healthier". These people are being misled by themselves and by a market and government that is all too happy to take advantage of their naivety. And this isn't the only example. There are industries that consumers support, some with an environmental bent, and some not, that consumers support every day, ad nauseaum. Even when we try to be environmentalists, we can be polluters because, as always, we have a vested interest in ourselves.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

My guess is China is having a throwback to the first industrial revolution where industrial barons treated everyone like dirt, forced them to work long hours in dangerous enviorments for crap pay. You know... back when there was a legitimate need for labor unions. Long story short, executive greed. They probably don't give a damn about anything as long as they expediently make their bottom line.

It's not a throwback for China, Ducimus, it's just a step along the ladder to prosperity.

What you see (correct me if I'm wrong), is an unevolved system where concepts of justice do not apply. You see people and their environments being treated as expendables - slaves to the opportunistic and the fortunately advantaged.

I see something totally different. I see a prosperous society building itself from the ground up in terms of economic and political freedom, in the way that societies must, hampered only slightly by a political party that insists upon maintaining control.

Every society relevant has been through what China is going through now. On repeated occasions, at times. It's not a matter of principles or or politics or anything else we care to blame, it is a simple matter of economics. Everyone has to climb the damn ladder. There is no productive shortcut on the level of the individual or the society. Societies of individuals that have climbed the ladder have the wealth to do something about individuals who have not, to some extent. Societies that are based upon helping everyone up the ladder just fail.