A paramilitary policeman faces the sunrise while patrolling Tiananmen Square on a hazy morning in Beijing.
When Red Goes Green
A burgeoning Chinese environmental movement tries to stem the devastation wrought by the country’s massive economic transformation.
BY Jehangir Pocha (Beijing)
In November, much of China watched in horror as work crews struggled to contain a benzene spill that polluted the northeastern Songhua River and disrupted drinking water supplies to about 12 million people in the region for more than a week.
But even those watching the event unfold on TV from the comfort of their homes in Beijing weren’t entirely safe from the effects of China’s increasing environmental decay. China’s capital is one of the most polluted in the world and lung cancer is now the number one cause of death here, according to China’s own State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). A thick cloud of sulfur envelops the city most evenings and a recent picture taken from NASA’s Terra satellite showed the entire city covered by a nearly opaque band of gray smog.
With more and more people suddenly finding themselves directly affected by endemic pollution, public awareness of and anger over China’s deteriorating environment is growing. And so is their willingness to take risks and do something about it, despite the strictures on organized political activity in this authoritarian state.
“People are taking a stand,” says Dai Qing, a political and environmental activist who was jailed during the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Dai emerged from prison to champion opposition to the giant Three Gorges Dam, which she calls “the most environmentally and socially destructive project in the world.”
In the decade since China’s first environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, was allowed to be registered in 1994, more than 2,000 environmental NGOs have risen all over the country, according to government reports. Once disparate, under-funded, untrained and badly equipped, many of these NGOs are now learning how to organize and empower themselves. Over the last two months, Dai has been running a communications workshop for local NGO workers from a small office within the bowels of a humble-looking residential neighborhood in Beijing.
Zheng Jun Feng, 43, a scientist with Green Remote, a local NGO that studies satellite imaging and remote sensing data, says he attended the sessions because he needs to find better ways to get around the controls and constraints the Chinese government places on his work.
“I want to learn how to take my thoughts and ideas to foreign friends,” Zheng says, echoing the view of many activists here who say foreign money and expertise is critical for China’s budding NGOs to grow.
A widening impact
This call is being increasingly heeded abroad. Dai says her sessions are being co-sponsored by Probe International, a Canadian environmental watchdog group, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. One reason international aid is flowing to China’s environmental NGOs is that while China’s booming economy is buoying global markets, the environmental fallout of this production is spreading.
“A lot of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants from China are reaching Japan with the western wind and even the west coast of the United States,” says Dr. Tsutomu Toichi, managing director and chief executive economist of the Institute of Energy Economics in Tokyo.
Yet China, along with other developing nations such as India, is free of any obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to reduce the emission of various ozone-depleting gases. (The United States and Australia, who together account for about 27 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, have also not agreed to sign the protocol.)
A concerned Japan has tried to encourage China, which emits about 25 million tons of acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide each year, to install de-sulfurization units in its coal-fired power plants by providing it with technical know-how and more than $40 million in “green aid.” Yet Toichi says that “most Chinese power companies prefer to pay the financial penalties” of not installing the equipment because it’s cheaper to do.
Justin Fong, the founder of Moving Mountains, a San Francisco-based NGO helping Dai organize the training sessions, says the activists in his class “may seem ordinary, but they’re all doing ground-breaking work, and taking real chances” by trying to change such mentalities.
Initially, Chinese NGOs and journalists had focused on more politically “acceptable” issues, such as tree planting campaigns. But now many are engaged in fierce battles with authorities over the construction of dams and other public works mega-projects, as well as filing lawsuits against polluting factories.
“If we don’t speak up, don’t take responsibility, our country will be poisoned,” says Wu Gang, a journalist with Shanxi Youth Daily who has been fighting China’s coal mafia in the mineral-rich central province of Shanxi.
So far, Wu and others like him have had some success, and a growing section of the Chinese leadership has been vocal in calling for China’s economic policies to be more environmentally sensitive.
China’s economic “miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace,” Pan Yue, China’s deputy minister for the environment, said in a recent interview with Der Spiegel magazine. “Acid rain is falling on one third of China’s territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless. … One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air … [and] because the air and water are polluted we are losing between 8 and 15 percent of our gross domestic product.”
Statements like this from senior leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, have also encouraged environmentalists, particularly as SEPA has followed them with some action. Earlier this year, the agency suspended work on 30 large projects worth more than $10 billion after they failed to meet environmental standards. And in December, China’s chief environmental regulator, Xie Zhenhua, resigned shortly after the benzene spill in Harbin.
Yet Dai says there has been little change in Beijing’s overall economic and environmental policies, which continue to focus on creating the 7 percent annual growth analysts say the country needs to avert domestic political turmoil.
“Real disasters force the government to respond and so they have to say all the right things,” Dai says. But “a lot of the words from Hu and [Chinese Premier] Wen Jiabao are just to meet the overlap with the global mood.”
What also angers people is that the Chinese government, despite its rhetoric, continues to hide critical information from the public. Just about two months before the accident in Harbin, the Chinese central government had announced that it would stop treating the death toll from natural disasters as a state secret. But any hope that Beijing was moving toward a new transparency was quickly crushed after it became known that the government withheld news of the benzene spill for 10 days because a powerful state-owned company, the China National Petroleum Corporation, had caused the accident.
“There is also little honesty from the government on environmental issues because they fear the truth might cause turmoil in society,” says Kongjian Yu, dean of the graduate school of landscape architecture at Peking University and an environmental campaigner. “This is still a society in transition and China’s top priority is stability and growth.”
Indeed, the Chinese government’s development plans and economic policy remain dedicated to cars instead of public transportation, fossil fuels instead of alternative energies and pampering manufacturers with cheap resources instead of pushing them towards greater efficiencies. That’s made China the world’s largest consumer of coal, grain, steel and meat, and the world’s second-largest consumer of gas. As a result, SEPA estimates that, in Beijing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment.
“All this is waking Chinese people to environmental issues just as the extinction of the bald eagle awakened Americans to preservation in the 1960s,” Yu says.
Fong says the 20-odd public interest lawyers, journalists and nongovernmental organization managers who attend his three-hour sessions after putting in a full day’s work are a determined bunch.
“There’s this new sense of ‘I can,’ ” Fong says. “And it’s not just with the younger generation. Even older people here have a feeling, a passion to change things. This country’s future is at stake.”
There is indeed a high rate of lung cancer in Beijing but it is mostly due to smoking which is incredibly heavy in China. The government are doing next to nothing about this because of the money they rake in as a state monopoly. A Chinese friend says they also hope it will help reduce the population!! I am sure the environmentalists are aware of this. But can they do anything? Bob
Exceeding 300,000 degrees. Either the Chinese have a terrible case of can-do optimism, or the Angolan press is making fun of them. Maybe something was lost in the translation.
Hmmm. Only about 2000 degrees Celsius for lava. How about nuclear blasts?
wha?? This article is a wild one. According to this, China is on the verge of making "infinite energy" with a fusion device, there's just one little catch: If a device is developed that can withstand temperatures as high as 100 million Celsius degrees and control a deuterium-tritium reaction, it will be as though an "artificial sun" had been created able to supply infinite, clean energy for human beings. I wonder what the temperature is inside of a volcano?
Hmmm. I'm a former Texan. Aren't central Texans getting their nuclear energy from Kellog, Brown & Root---a Halliburton subsidiary? I wouldn' trust that company with a book of matches. I can only wonder why statesmen would trust the people who support them. Oregon fought Enron long and hard, but eventually Enron won. After the collapse and publicity, judges in this state were wondering out loud if that little trick where PGE and Enron sold energy back and forth on paper, raising the price each time, was illegal. They were smart enough to figure out that it was unethical. Evidently lobbiests have been working hard for years to make legal unethical practices that have been illegal in the past. My compadre and I have passed on the option of paying more for energy through PGE to help with the development of alternative energy. We figure the electricity is all coming in on the same wire, regardless of how it's generated, and it's not like they're offering us stock in the future. If they hadn't gotten in bed with Enron, perhaps the stockholders would trust them enough to buy stocks in alternative energy. We're supposed to pay more for energy for that warm, fuzzy feeling? Funny where the free market and capitalism begins and ends, isn't it?
I love birds too johnnyincentx. Just hung up a new birdfeeder full of seed, and I'm waiting patiently with my camera and the zoom lens I got for Christmas. How many wrens would it take to make a stew? ;) Can I call you johnny? One of my concerns with nuclear power plants is the bathtub curve. Nuclear power plants are more likely to suffer failures when new or old. I do not remember off the top of my head what constitutes old, and am not going to surf right now because I'm too distractable. My point is, that most of our plants are old right now, and many are not in the best condition. I believe Cheney owns stock in 17 of them. If we're going to rely on nuclear power, then I want to see the plants publicly owned. The profit motive, stockholders, and safety aren't such a good combination. The risks with nuclear power plants and the security risks they pose are profound. Look at Enron. I saw the documentary about Enron, The Smartest Guys In The Room last night. It was fascinating, though it does milk pity for vampires. I like the wind power idea, and the idea of having energy produced as locally as possible.
WileyWitch: You are right in regards to that. But instead of thinking either or, how about doing both? I don't think there is any energy solution that is NOT finite either in terms of supply or amount. A better way to determine whether or not it's a good choice would be to consider the "hidden costs" (something the oil industry never did or does) "environmental impact" "disposal issues" Etc. My personal favorite is wind power. However the environmental extremists are attacking this everywhere. Their main objection is that birds are being killed by the wind generators. Their second is that it is unsightly. OK let's say everything they say is true. Is it really anywhere near the # of birds killed by air pollution and various other deadly chemicals introduced into our environment via burning carbon fuels? And I think it's very subjective to say windmills are unsightly. A little creative thinking and they could be painted to look like works of art. Yet these anti-wind activists are so unyielding, I think that they must be a covert oil industry operation. LOL Oh and let me say I'm a bird-lover. I spend too much money feeding those winged rascals. After viewing them for years, I also canNOT believe they are that stupid or easily fooled by a moving windmill. heir eyesight is far better than ours to boot. Don't quote me, but the last time I heard any info on it, we had hundreds of years of nuclear energy available, and that was based on OLD technology. Newer technology potentially can extend this time. Additionally the USA has a supply all it's own. Which if exploited could help a few Native Nations here. Since the supplies are on their land. The solution is NOT 1 source, but many sources, and having each source of energy tailored to the users. In areas where wind power is abundant it should be used. In areas with abundant easy-to-use Sunlight, solar power should be primary and in other places nuclear. All would be connected as we are now in an electric grid that would take and give power from and to areas based on needs. Now as far as the changes you suggest. They need to be done starting now, and here and there they are. If added into the above equation, we could do so much more with less energy for more people. ;)
Well johnnyincentx, I'll take that into consideration. Still, I'm thinking that lowering our demand and changing our architecture and cityscapes will do more in the long run than alternative energy sources. There is design technology and materials now that will lower electric demands by at least half. One question about the nuclear industry is how long before we run out of fuel for that? Surely, nuclear energy is no less finite than fossil fuels. Maybe not? I'd put my money on finity. I need to do a little research on that.
Posted by think4yourself on 2006-01-20 15:44:25
The problem with the anti-nuclear environmentalists is they want ABSOLUTE safety. Their standards are basically impossible to achieve. So instead of nuclear power and it's relatively clean energy, we have the filthy carbon based power. WileyWitch you ARE right that it's hard to dispose of plutonium, BUT ONLY if you demand 100% safety. That's just not possible, and unrealistic. The solutions presented do have extremely LOW risk factors, like Yucca mountain, but the uncompromising anti-nuclear lobby (no doubt a front for oil-companies) demands 0% risk. Nothing in life is zero risk, unless you are dead. If we want a decent, clean environment, liberals, lefties, moderates and centrists have to reign in the Absolutism that defines the envoronmental activists, and demand some compromise. As it is now the nuclear energy industry is the MOST regulated energy sector bar none. That's the reason we haven't seen a new plant built in decades. Yet the anti-nuke absolutist activists would have you believe there are gaping holes in regulation Etc. In a perfect world they'd be right, but in a world being killed inch by inch by carbon based energy use, the dangers seem far more manageable in comparison.
Think4yourself, it is possible to impeach Bush without hating him.
Hi, GrayArea. Being an American that doesn't drive, I do indeed see how hooked on cars this society is. This culture doesn't even understand walking. I can't count the times I've asked for directions and heard "oh, you can't walk---that's too far" when "too far" was about seven to ten blocks. So often, people have expressed pity when I tell them I'm walking. My policy for this is to point out to them that if I told them I ran around in a circle every day they might envy me, so why pity me because I walk. And who hasn't heard of the woman who was "too hot to be riding the bus". Cars have cult status in the U.S. It is a strange dependence. We'll have to hit bottom before we change. Nevertheless, pollution doesn't always express itself where it's made. And don't forget jets polluting the skies. Evidently during that three day grounding after the 9/11 attacks, the air quality improved measurably in the U.S. It would be nice if developing nations didn't make the same mistakes we have. Perhaps they will learn from our disasters.
You don't know if it is coming from China? Well the content of your local land fill probably came from China, but you can, no doubt, look a lot closer to home for the cause of your shortness of breath. Most people don't have to look much further than their garage. The blind opposition to effective and comprehensive mass transit systems in most areas boggles the mind. Your city may have an excellent system, but most communities have to fight tooth and nail for a mediocre one. Everything is simply built around the essential notion of a car (and a big one at that). Nuclear power is one thing, but it too has pollution issues down the road. It is really too bad that the only changes people seem willing to accept are the ones where everything remains the same. (oops - turning off the lights in the other room now)
Anyone else having a problem with asthma? Anyone else see a 300 foot ceiling of cloud cover so dense and opaque that it looks like a ceiling painted with a roller and flat latex paint? Anyone else see the air all the way down to the ground? I'm not just talking fog, here---it makes the eyes feel gritty just to step outside sometimes. Near a busy intersection, the eyes burn. I've been holding a scarf in front of my face. I'm starting to hear other people talking about these effects and attributing them to the air. People are saying are also saying, 'at first, I thought I had a flu, but it's not going away'. I'm near the West Coast, and I don't know if knowing the pollution is coming from China helps, but it certainly makes me want to root for those NGOs. It has been raining for 21 days, and the air is anything but sweet smelling. I've been watching for signs of pitting in glass, plexiglass, and metals. None so far. I've heard that street people in a city north of this one were dying from the air pollution. Whoa. Don't care for nuclear power myself---I would absolutely veto unregulated nuclear power, if I had the power; but this pollution is heinous. I'll consider supporting it, and that's a big step for me. I guess it's the plutonium that concerns me most, and the fact that there is no way to safely dispose of it for all the time that a grain of it can cause lung cancer and birth defects. Now that I know that lung cancer is the number one cause of death in Beijing, I'm going to work harder at working up the nerve to wear a mask. It isn't a tin foil hat issue, is it?
Nuclear power is the only practical way to reduce increasingly higher rates of greehouse emissions. No wonder one of the founders of Greenpeace is such a staunch supporter of it. Good call with the impeachment thing Brian. We'll keep our eye on that one. Good luck - believe me, the Dems can't look like buffoons all the time. Something is going to stick! Hopefully! Let's just keep seeing how that pans out moving forward everybody.
Posted by InThoseTimes on 2006-01-18 14:21:31
The impeachment movement has hit the new year running. If you consider the following facts, it's clear that the issue of impeachment has decisively taken off: 1) The People's Impeachment Lobby is a huge success. Members of Congress received more than 70,000 letters urging impeachment. 2) A new Zogby poll will be released tomorrow showing that by a 52% to 43% margin, Americans believe that Congress should consider impeaching George W. Bush if he wiretapped the people of this country without court approval (and everyone knows and Bush has admitted that he ordered just such huge secret spying operation.) The poll, with a plus or minus margin of error of 2.9%, shows that 66% of Democrats, 59% of independents, and 23% of Republicans support impeachment for wiretapping. Majorities favored impeachment across the country: the East (54%), South (53%), and West (52%), Central states (50%). The significance of this poll can be seen by way of comparison with public attitudes in the months before the impeachment of Clinton. In August and September 1998, sixteen major polls found that only 36% supported hearings to impeach Clinton. 3) Even Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Arlen Specter, who will be convening hearings next month on Bush