Tianjin Steel Plan in Hebei Province, China
Check out award-winning Lu Guang’s photography with a focus on showcasing the environmental consequences of China’s modern industrial revolution. Thanks to a reader for sharing the link.
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I love the smell of chromates in the morning … smells like, victory over the bourgeoisie.
It reminds me of the classic Onion News Network video “China Celebrates Status As Number One Polluter”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ4K0hHin9s
I became instantly sympathetic to environmentalism on my first exposure to the Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) in Tianjin Municipality. I had never seen anything that could be literally described as a “waste land” before. A combination of steampunk and Charles Dickens come to life.
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This is made all the more tragic by the fact that China, lacking a meaningful representative government, can keep doing this kind of thing no matter how destructive it is to its population.
Talking to folks in Hebei, many said that the summers seemed to have gotten a lot hotter since even a couple of decades ago, maybe just due to having more concrete on the ground and soot in the air. Anyway, the people understand what’s going on, and are alarmed about it, and Beijing will have to reckon with that, even without a representative democracy.
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Here is the comment I made on the NYT blog article:
This stuff is bad. However a certain perspective is required. All countries go through this stuff as part of their development process. The U.S. went through it in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Indeed, the Northeast and mid-Atlantic used to be chock-full of the same kind of sweatshops as shown in these photos. Lake Erie was so polluted that it was considered a dead lake and the Hudson river was so polluted that it occasionally caught fire. China is now passing through this phase.
I have lived in Taiwan and visited various cities in China. Yes, the air pollution is bad. However, I have experienced worse in other places (SoCal was actually worse in the late 50′s through early 70′s). Tokyo and other Japanese cities used to have horrific air pollution until the early 70′s. I know Japanese who have traveled to various regions of China and they tell me that it is not any worse worse than what Japan had 40 years ago. Taiwan’s pollution is slowly getting better and China’s will improve over as their economy grows and their technology improves. Also, the sweatshops will go away as China’s economy grows and their population stops growing (their working age population actually peaks in 2013).
I would really, really hope such was the case. I’m not versed in developmental economics, but it seems that China’s growth and subsequent pollution might pose a problem orders of magnitude greater.
That assumption is based on the relative population of China now versus when those other countries were industrializing, and the level of development that population wants to reach. When the Northeast was industrializing, there were maybe only a few tens of millions of people (?) feeding the machine and they weren’t aspiring to own cars, MP3 players, and other hydrocarbon resource intensive goods.
Indeed. China is big enough to inflict considerable environmental damage on the region and perhaps the entire world.
Turning vast areas of one’s nation into permanently polluted shit holes is not going to help China’s future.
Kurt9: yes, what you say is basically correct… Except that China will turn grey before it gets rich, which will limit it’s options going forward and the social welfare and living standard opportunities available.
Just wondering at what stage might we want to take Kyoto from mere protocols to something that we may wish to enforce? I can not believe that the environmental impact of this uncontrolled and irresponsbile development stops at China’s borders.
“I can not believe that the environmental impact of this uncontrolled and irresponsbile development stops at China’s borders.”
As someone who lives in Japan’s west, I can confirm that your hunch is correct – I’ve seen this backed up with data, a giant yellow blob on the horizon, and fits of coughing.
Who, however, is going to force China to do anything about it? Those factories are earning Western and Japanese investors big returns and furnishing the rest of us with all of the crap we can no longer do without.
Re: China’s growth trajectory – Japan was an ashtray in the 60s. Change happened partly because of pressure on the government from citizen’s groups. The ruling conservatives caved in to opposition demands for environmental measures in order to stop their slip in the polls (Tokyo even had a Communist Party mayor back in the day who was pressing enviornmental issues). Neither of these seems like a looming factor in China (except Communist Party mayors, but it doesn’t mean the same thing…) In addition, Japan’s high growth period left it with a disciplined, highly educated workforce and a critical mass of innovation that transformed consumer culture internationally (Nintendo, LCD, new styles of fuel efficient autos, the walkman, home VCRs and DVD players – even if Japanese companies didn’t do all of the inventing, they packaged products in a way that got them into homes and driveways and built unshakable brand loyalty). In 1995 people were buzzing about us all driving Chinese autos by 2010 but that still seems like a decades away proposition. In the meantime, does China have anything to make up for the rise in wages, drying up of the labor pool, and inevitable move of factory jobs to India and Vietnam that this will herald?
SJPONeill: Kyoto would have close to zero impact on the photos you see in this series. Kyoto is focused solely on reducing CO2, and has nothing to say about environmental pollution.
Except that China will turn grey before it gets rich, which will limit it’s options going forward and the social welfare and living standard opportunities available.
This is benefit, not a problem. The aging and decrease of population will make continued economic liberalization easier because there will be no mass unemployment like there would be if China had a growing population.
Kyoto would have close to zero impact on the photos you see in this series. Kyoto is focused solely on reducing CO2, and has nothing to say about environmental pollution.
Environmental pollution is a real problem. Global warming is a scam.