China’s great moral dilemma

For most of the last two years, I have been living and working in China. Being a part-time political and environmental activist, I like to engage people in conversations about the enormous environmental problems China is facing, and imposing on the world. Few want to “go there” with me; it seems most Chinese people are too proud and eager to see their great country, which truly has been miraculous in what it has achieved in the last 30 years, become the next economic “superpower.” Most foreigners, it seems, at least in mixed company, don’t want to offend the Chinese mentality. I hear both offer the rationalization that China will address the problem once she has gained sufficient strength and economic power to be able to do so.   Few Chinese recognize, or openly acknowledge,  the gravity of the situation that their country currently faces.  However, waiting any longer to squarely face and deal with the severity of China’s environmental degradation will certainly have dire consequences for China and the rest of the world.

There are a number of reasons for China’s escalating environmental crisis. First, even though the central government issues fairly strict regulations, the actual monitoring and enforcement is largely done by local governments that are more interested in economic growth. Furthermore, due to the restrictive nature of China’s undemocratic regime, the environmental work of non-governmental forces, such as lawyers, journalists, and non-governmental organizations, is severely hampered. In addition, polluting industries continued to receive inexpensive access to land, water, electricity, oil, and bank loans, while market-oriented measures, such as surcharges on fuel and coal, are not being implemented by the government despite their proven success in other countries. Add to this the rapidly growing Chinese middle class and accelerating consumerism; if you’ve spent any time in China, it becomes obvious that one of the primary leisure-time activities is shopping. However, fortunately, at least some consumers are beginning to question: “Who cares if I can buy a Louis Vuitton bag, if the air and water are killing my family?’”

Following are a few facts about the depressing environmental situation in China:

Air pollution

According to an article in The Week, “8 Scary Facts About China’s ‘Smogpocolypse”:

1. China burns nearly half the world’s coal, reaching 5.4 billion tons in 2013.
2. Researchers at Greenpeace estimate that Beijing alone suffered 2,589 deaths because of PM2.5 air pollution in 2012.
3. Beijing also lost an estimated $328 million in economic costs due to air pollution in the same year.
4. The highest PM2.5 level ever recorded in traffic-clogged New York in a 24-hour period was 29 micrograms per cubic meter, while readings in Harbin, China recently topped 1,000. (PM2.5 is considered the most dangerous type of air born pollution)

Water pollution

ThinkProgress.org reports that:

1. Half of China’s rivers — about 28,000 — have vanished since 1990. The head of China’s ministry of water resources said in 2012 that up to 40 percent of the country’s rivers are “seriously polluted.”
2. Nearly two thirds of China’s rural population—more than 500 million people—use water contaminated by human and industrial waste, and most of China’s rural areas have no system in place to treat waste water.
3. 57 percent of urban groundwater, a primary source of drinking water, is seriously polluted.
4. Water consumed by people in China contains dangerous levels of arsenic, fluorine and sulfates.

Deforestation and Desertification

Some facts from Al Jazeera and other net sources:

1. Illegal logging and slash and burn agriculture consume up to 5,000 square kilometers of virgin forest every year. In northern and central China forest cover has been reduced by half in the last two decades. The mountains in southwest China have suffered serious deforestation, logging, hunting and collection of plants and animals for traditional medicines.
2. The furniture industry in China gobbles up large amounts of Chinese timber as well as illegally-logged tropical rain forest timber from Indonesia and other places. The use of disposable chopsticks uses up 1.3 million cubic meters of timber a year according to China’s environment ministry.
3. Desertification is one of the most severe environmental problems in China. The area of desertification, which is 2.62 million sq km or about 27 percent of China’s land territory, far exceeds the nation’s total farmland, and is expanding at a rate of more than 3,000 sq km every year.
4. The Gobi desert in central China gobbles up 3,600 square kilometers of grassland each year, creating powerful sandstorms, robbing farmers of food-producing land, and displacing people from their homes. China’s desertification even affects neighboring countries such as Japan, North Korea and South Korea.

The Environmental Impacts on the Chinese Economy:

One of main justifications for not taking immediate and strong action against these serious problems is that it would hurt China’s economy, yet the impact of environmental issues on the economic performance of China is huge:

• $36 B lost due to water shortage
• $16 B lost due to acid rain
• $6 B due to spread of desert

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the Chinese environment authority, estimates that every year, China loses around 10% of its GDP due to problems related with pollution. These figures do not even include the cost of cleaning up the current pollution. Given its size, social instability in China might become an even bigger problem than the economic cost. The real question is can China afford not to solve its environmental problems?

Lack of enforcement and awareness

For example if we look at incentives of companies, they are primarily focused on making profit; in most cases in China there are little to no direct costs of polluting, but there are additional costs for more environmentally friendly production. Higher costs are a competitive disadvantage and therefore companies resist reducing its pollution on their own. It works similarly for individual consumers. Individuals are driven more by personal benefits than the collective good, as the following example illustrates: “a survey by China Youth Daily and the British Council showed that 80% of young Chinese are concerned by global warming but they would buy a car if they could afford it.”

In addition to the above, environmental awareness of Chinese consumers, industry and (local) authorities is low. Many are unaware of how their behavior damages the environment; there is a lack of public information about the causes and effects of pollution and Chinese suffer the effects but accept it as normal.

Signs of hope

Based on mounting pressure from the global community and increasing numbers of informed and dissatisfied citizens, there are numerous positive changes taking place:

• Enforcement is increasing and becoming increasing costly for business and industry polluters.
• To curb excessive growth of the sectors that consume too much energy and cause serious pollution, policies are being set by the government to limit the rapid expansion of energy-gorging industries including power, steel, oil refinery, chemicals, construction materials, and metals.
• To reduce the use of coal and encourage a switch to cleaner burning fuels, the government has introduced a tax on high-sulfur coals.
• A system of emissions trading for sulfur dioxide, similar to that used in the United States, is being tested in some sites with pilot projects, and may eventually be applied nationwide.
• The Chinese government will advance reforms in the pricing of natural gas, water and other resources, raise the tax levied on pollutant discharge, establish a “polluter pays” system and severely punish those who violate the environmental protection laws.
• The almost constantly improving energy efficiency of China’s economy, since 2006 in particular, it has been supported by very aggressive, target-driven policies to engender improved energy efficiency, especially in industrial enterprises.
• China has also built the world’s biggest installed capacity of wind power in the last decade and solar is now on a similar trajectory. Additionally, it has the largest hydropower capacity in the world.
• China has dramatically increased imports and production of natural gas to substitute for coal in key sectors such as household use.

Caveat

“However, a time of slowing economic growth may not be the most hopeful time for transformative changes to limit environmental damage,” said Chris Nielsen, executive director of the China Project at Harvard University. “Fears about unemployment may limit the political willingness to go that far. The entrenched power of state-owned enterprises, which the Third Plenary appears to have addressed only weakly, will likely continue to serve as a counterweight favoring economic growth over aggressive environmental progress.“

“The real number one barrier to environmental protection in China is not lack of money or technology,” Ma Jun, one of the country’s best-known environmental activists told the Christian Science Monitor last year. “It is lack of motivation. We need the public to provide that motivation. But they must be informed before they can participate in any meaningful way.”

What can we do?

But as I emphasize in the introductory comments of this blog, there is a deeply engrained resistance to turn towards the truth and to become so informed. To do so entails letting the sadness, grief and remorse about what we – and yes, unless we are an ascetic living in a remote cave in Tibet, we are all most assuredly part of the problem – are doing to our sacred Mother Earth. This seems counter-intuitive; scary, certainly socially unacceptable and perhaps even a bit crazy. Why would we want to subject ourselves to this pain? Because unless we do, and we remain numb, not really allowing the reality of what is happening to impact our hearts. Consequently we stay inert, unable to participate fully, with our whole beings, in the solutions to the problem. Yet increasing numbers of people are doing this work, with the help of a community of like-minded people and trained facilitators – the work of Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects and many others doing similar work. And from the willingness to indeed “go there,” people are finding that contrary to their greatest fears, what happens after such work is renewed sources of courage and strength to not only squarely face the horrors of our own actions as humans, but to start to act decisively to help change the course of these actions towards a more loving and sustainable world.

There are many ways to participate in this work: find or create a group in your area, or if you prefer, do it on your own – there are lots of excellent exercises and practices here: http://workthatreconnects.org/the-work-that-reconnects/#more-1146. Ultimately, this work is about letting our hearts become more raw and open, more attuned to the Earth, her cycles and her miseries, which provides the natural impetus to do our part to help create a more loving and sustainable relationship with Her.

In addition, if you know any Chinese people, or people who have connections with Chinese people, please pass this on – the Chinese translation is coming soon!

 

References

General:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/chinas-choice/2013/jun/07/chinas-environmental-problems-grim-ministry-report

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/world/asia/as-chinas-environmental-woes-worsen-infighting-emerges-as-biggest-obstacle.html?_r=0

http://www.cfr.org/china/chinas-environmental-crisis/p12608

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_China

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/26/2981521/china-environment-pollution-government/

Air Pollution

http://theweek.com/articles/458332/8-scary-facts-about-chinas-smogpocalypse

Water Pollution

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/26/2981521/china-environment-pollution-government/

Deforestation and Desertification

http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item389.html

http://www.gacchina.com/China_Insight/China_Facts/Desertification/desertification.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/12/2012126123056457256.html

Impacts on the Chinese Economy

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr&ei=oB-mVeuWNsGvmAXJ_62oAQ&fg=1#q=how+is+china%27s+environmental+problems+hurting+its+economy%3F

Caveat

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/26/2981521/china-environment-pollution-government/

What can we do?

http://workthatreconnects.org/the-work-that-reconnects/#more-1146