Reason Number 25 - The Silence of Chinese Conservation
Kamis, 21 Agustus 2008
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‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 47
"The River Yangtze is the third longest on the planet. It is approximately 6,300 km long and accounts for more than a third of China’s total freshwater supplies. It discharges more than a million million cubic meters of water into the sea annually. A river so huge, it might be thought, would be almost impossible to pollute heavily.
Yet according to the 2007 health report on this river (which, despite being billed as ‘annual’ by the Chinese government is the first of its kind) it is under major pressure. Around 10% of the Yangtze is in ‘critical condition,’ and 30% of its major tributaries are seriously polluted. According to Yang Guishan, a researcher at a department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation’s leading intellectual body, this impact is ‘largely irreversible.’ In 2006, the Yangtze fell to its lowest level since records began in 1877.
Every species that lives in the river is in decline, most dramatically the white-flag dolphin, or ‘Baiji,’ one of only five species of freshwater dolphin in the world.
A six week search for the white-flag along the river did not find a single dolphin, leading some researchers to conclude it is in fact extinct. If so, it will be the first time mankind has driven a cetacean to extinction."
China’s lack of concern for the environment is pretty shocking. There is almost no environmental activism at any level in society. The sector I am most familiar with, the highly-educated, are no exception.
Now these guys are environmentally aware. They have some idea how fucked-up China’s environment is (though they only know a mere fraction of the true situation) but they simply don’t care. I’ve never seen a student turn off the air conditioner after class, or turn off a light. Most dump their trash – food wrappers, drink bottles – on the floor and saunter out of the class uncaring.
For most of my stay in China, I’ve never seen a Chinese person take a used plastic bag to the store. When I go to the store, I take a plastic bag. And when I get it out at the till, most times the checkout operator and the people in the queue smile, or laugh – ‘Look at the funny foreigner!’
I guess that’s slowly going to change now that Shanghai government compels stores to charge for plastic bags. The many years of ‘patriotic education’ – the slogans plastered everywhere exhorting people to ‘Love China’ and so on had precisely zero effect. There is very little sense of altruism in China; most everything is filtered through the lens of immediate personal benefit.
That’s why most Chinese people care nothing for the environment, but they do care to save a coin.
And that’s why China’s environment will continue to be raped, ravaged and exploited for the foreseeable future.
There’s money in it.
Now these guys are environmentally aware. They have some idea how fucked-up China’s environment is (though they only know a mere fraction of the true situation) but they simply don’t care. I’ve never seen a student turn off the air conditioner after class, or turn off a light. Most dump their trash – food wrappers, drink bottles – on the floor and saunter out of the class uncaring.
For most of my stay in China, I’ve never seen a Chinese person take a used plastic bag to the store. When I go to the store, I take a plastic bag. And when I get it out at the till, most times the checkout operator and the people in the queue smile, or laugh – ‘Look at the funny foreigner!’
I guess that’s slowly going to change now that Shanghai government compels stores to charge for plastic bags. The many years of ‘patriotic education’ – the slogans plastered everywhere exhorting people to ‘Love China’ and so on had precisely zero effect. There is very little sense of altruism in China; most everything is filtered through the lens of immediate personal benefit.
That’s why most Chinese people care nothing for the environment, but they do care to save a coin.
And that’s why China’s environment will continue to be raped, ravaged and exploited for the foreseeable future.
There’s money in it.
‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 47
"It’s safe to say that the idea of “harmoniously coexisting with nature,” which China introduced in 2003 as a “new concept” is not working. One reason that the national government has such limited success in controlling pollution is that local governments do everything they can to keep the inspectors out.
For example, many local governments set up industrial parks which banned other government departments from conducting any inspections whatsoever without direct approval. This is why most of the hundred firms in one such industrial park in Henan Province did not install any pollution control equipment at all, and instead just dumped untreated waste into a local river.
Similar parks can be found in Anhui, Gansu and Zhejiang Provinces. All across China county governments collude with polluters to keep the money flowing into their pockets and the poison flowing into the environment."
China is still brutalizing Tibet, even as the Games are underway. Heavy-handed crackdowns, making sure no Tibetan voice is heard free and clear. So if you are in China and can be on camera, make a ‘T’ sign for Tibet and an X sign for Xinjiang.
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Judul: Reason Number 25 - The Silence of Chinese Conservation
Ditulis oleh Unknown
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