Posted on 06/06/2007 5:15:18 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
(BEIJING) -- Where to start? With the melting glaciers of Mount Everest?
Or a village in Shanxi province that survives on trucked-in water — because underground explosions for coal mining have drained the lakes and wells. The coal keeps electric plants humming, but the mining generates pollution that has left farm fields toxic.
Nothing can grow here anymore, one resident told CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen. Sinkholes swallowed village graves and the coal dust makes breathing hard — which is why 400,000 people each year die prematurely from lung disease.
And thanks to bad air, China has 16 of the world's top 20 polluted cities.
What are the world's most polluted cities?
Take Beijing, which just proudly announced it now has 3 million cars ... so clear days give way to more bad pollution days.
And there's a new danger: Dust storms from the northern Gobi Desert used to hit once a decade. Now it's once a year; visibility can drop to less than a city block.
It's happening because every day the Gobi Desert moves a little more south, claiming land left barren by overgrazing or from water shortages because of too much irrigation.
In fact, Petersen reports, the leading edge of the desert is less than 50 miles from downtown Beijing.
China's uses America's inaction on the environment as an excuse.
"They say as long as the U.S. doesn't move forward, how can you expect a poor country like China to move forward," said University of Michigan China scholar Ken Leiberthal.
And an ill wind is blowing China's bad air to America. Steve Cliff already sees Chinese pollutants on his monitors in northern California and worries about China's ever-increasing dependence on coal.
"It stands to reason that if one new coal-fired power plant is built per week that more pollution will be evidenced here in the United States," said Cliff.
That also means Americans may soon be paying a price for China's polluted rise to prosperity.
It’s worth noting that the Kyoto Treaty exempted China from its emission restrictions, as well as Mexico and India.
That is ONE GREAT reason that we could never sign it.
We need to stifle human progress for humanities sake and start from the top and take individual wealth away from all for the good of the whole.
You will be prying something cold and blue out of my dying hand before I succumb to the rhetoric.
I’ve read that 25% of the airborne pollutants in the LA Basin can be traced to China.
Odd that this article doesn’t mention the nearly daily riots that occur throughout China by folks protesting pollution.Frpm factories, the government, factories.etc.etc.
One-quarter of LA's air pollution: made in China
"Nor does China's air pollution respect borders: on certain days almost 25 percent of the particulate matter clotting the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental experts in California predict that China could eventually account for roughly a third of the state's air pollution."
On a recent visit to China, a friend spotted this ad in a Beijing newspaper. He sent me the photo with a translation of the ad copy.
Yes, you can now join the millions of happy and prosperous Chinese citizens taking advantage of the growing numbers of American and Western multinational corporations “outsourcing” their production to the hard-working and industrious people of China. This outsourcing has now spread to their food supplies and ingestible items. Since these firms pay us for gross weight – and this new weight will be pretty gross – and the stupid American government only spot-checks imported items in these categories (they just got lucky on the anti-freeze thing), it has opened an entirely new opportunity which our beloved Chairman is offering to any Chinese citizen willing to do a little of what the foolish Americans call “grunt work.”
Installing one of these state-of-the-art food additive production facilities behind YOUR hovel is as simple as clipping the coupon below and sending it to the address shown. Your production plant will be shipped to you in 4 to 6 weeks. Supplies are limited so don’t fart around. ACT NOW!! 
These silly Americans have an expression we have “borrowed” and modified to describe this new and exciting venture: “Don’t give me any s**t.”
Our motto will be “We won’t GIVE you any s**t. But we’ll SELL it to you fools at a really great price.”
AND LOOK FOR A NEW DROP-DEAD MONEY-MAKER COMING SOON. SOYLENT YELLOW PROMISES TO BE BIG!!
I swear its a personal attack on each and every person in America, from Twinkies to Vitamin C, Communist Red China is delivering goods to the US cleverly inserted in a broad area in almost everything we use, eat or wear. And all these products are done with little or no quality control.
We flock to the big box stores like Walmart and Kmart looking for bargains but we lose sight of what made us an independant strong country and that is what allowed us to be the strongest in the world, our immense ability to produce in quantity and quality consumer goods.
A case of a would be scenario, what if China was involved in a serious war and goods like vitamins, protein supplements or basic ingredients needed for preservatives suddenly was not available to us? The trickle down effect would be enormous. Myself I fear its not stockpiling ammo its getting prepared to manufacture my own vitamins, if neccesary find the ingredients needed that we take for granted and find or demand it again be sourced in the US, there should be a study of the effects of a scenario of NOTHING coming from China and how it can degrade or shut down parts of our infrastructure.
Now if China was to become a Muslim nation they would use this as a hostage ploy to demand we allow them world control but instead its just our dear old nemesis Communism at work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.