Is China's Environment Doomed ?

The statistics and facts both stagger and dismay.

Sixteen of the twenty most polluted cities in the world are in China. The country depends on coal for seventy percent of its energy needs, and the burning of coal while contributing to fifty percent of the world’s carbon-di-oxide emissions, also causes acid rains throughout East Asia.
Some 240 million people (about 19 percent of China’s population) belong in the swelling ranks of China’s consumer class and are purchasing the type of goods people buy in the United States.

The National Geographic told the story in May 16 2005. Things have not improved since and what the report goes on to say seems like a truism that echoes ominously through time. China is not to blame, because most countries entering consumer society will try to emulate the Unites States and others.

According to National Public Radio’s May 22, 2007 edition of “All Things Considered”, cancer and respiratory diseases are on the rise in China. China is a manufacturing hub today. For example, MIT research shows that in 1970, China produced less than ten percent of the world’s coke. The figure has now climbed to approximately fifty percent, while American and European coke production has fallen. “A consequence of globalization is outsourcing pollution.”

This is obvious from the basics of international trade theory. The production process is based on principles of comparative advantage. Presently, the lower value added components of the production chain have been shifted to countries like China and India.

A rapidly industrializing country needs to reconcile economic development with environmental protection.
Can it ?

Apparently not according to plans recently unveiled by the Chinese government (CNN, June 6 2007). Beijing plans to slash energy use by a fifth and to double its reliance on renewable energy resources by 2010. However, it has refused to set binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions saying that major industrialized nations must take the lead in this regard. Beijing gives higher priority to poverty reduction and sustainable economic development over environmental production.

Once upon a time, sustainable economic development, by definition meant protecting the environment as well.

Have the globe’s resources been stretched a limit where for a certain period of time, sustainable economic development cannot be partnered with plans to husband the
environment ? Or is this an example set by the major industrialized nations who did not have history and experience to draw upon ? Or is it that countries such as China merely want to emulate the U.S and other countries ?

The reasoning, I admit, is too simplistic.

All told, this is pause for thought.