Sunday - November 18, 2007

More on China's Status as a Third World Nation: Pollution

The International Herald Tribune has a really well done and interesting article on China's pollution problem. 

For us, here at The Virtuous Republic, it points out two important things. 

One, China might have industrialized, but it still acts and thinks not only like a third world nation, but like a third world nation guided by a communist dictatorship. So whereas market forces intervened during the industrialization of Britain and the United States to mitigate pollution and its effects, this will never happen in the hybrid system of commiecapitalism adopted by Beijing.

Two, all the fools who want first world nations to economically stagnate, or even decline to appease the god of global warming should be enemies of the state. Western nations, including the evil and despicable United States, have incrementally addressed pollution issues over the years and continue to do so. Western nations continue to grow their economies, but pollute less. Yet the global warming fear mongers wish to ignore China's complete lack of interest in addressing their massive pollution issues that cross international borders (see NASA photo of Chinese pollution).

As gloomy as China's pollution picture looks today, it is set to get significantly worse, because China has come to rely mainly on energy-intensive heavy industry and urbanization to fuel economic growth. In 2000, a team of economists and energy specialists at the Development Research Center, part of China's State Council, set out to gauge how much energy China would need over the ensuing 20 years to achieve the leadership's goal of quadrupling the size of the economy.

They based their projections on China's experience during the first 20 years of economic reform, from 1980 to 2000. In that period, China relied mainly on light industry and small-scale private enterprise to spur growth. It made big improvements in energy efficiency even as the economy expanded rapidly. Gross domestic product quadrupled, while energy use only doubled.

The team projected that such efficiency gains would probably continue. But the experts also offered what they called a worst-case situation in which the most energy-hungry parts of the economy grew faster and efficiency gains fell short.

That worst-case situation now looks wildly optimistic. Last year, China burned the energy equivalent of 2.7 billion tons of coal, three-quarters of what the experts had said would be the maximum required in 2020. To put it another way, China now seems likely to need as much energy in 2010 as it thought it would need in 2020 under the most pessimistic assumptions.

Make sure to read the rest of this well written article.

Trackposted to Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, and third world county, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Author: The Machiavellian
Technorati Tags: China Pollution
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