5 ms·

It sounds like China is starting to crack down. It's a luxury you have once you're affluent enough. The bootstrapping process is sadly very dirty everywhere tha

It sounds like China is starting to crack down. It's a luxury you have once you're affluent enough. The bootstrapping process is sadly very dirty everywhere that it's happened.

whatyoucantsay 9y ago
> The bootstrapping process is sadly very dirty everywhere that it's happened. Not on the scale China's has been. Their environmental destruction has been on such a scale that nearby countries, even those separated by ocean, have greatly impacted air quality and the oceans themselves have been greatly affected. Sweden wasn't wreaking Poland's skies and waters as it industrialised.
- richardknop 9y ago
  > Sweden wasn't wreaking Poland's skies and waters as it industrialised. Citation needed. But just using logic, Sweden has about 10 million people today. During industrialization it probably had much less (there was a population explosion in Europe after WW2). Let's say Sweden had 5 million people. Industrializing country of 5 million of people vs industrializing country of 1-1.5 billion is something which is ridiculous to compare. Imagine trying to industrialize double or triple of Europe from agrarian society again and tell me you think it would be clean and tidy process.
  - whatyoucantsay 9y ago
    More ridiculous is the idea that a nation deserves extra credit for being ridiculously overpopulated. In China's case, it's doubly absurd given that the CCP strong-armed an already too large populace into having more children for decades before wisely but again brutally reversing course with its famous one child policy. > "The 1950s census showed that China had 557 million people, and some professionally-trained demographers began urging that policies be put in place to limit population growth. Mao Zedong condemned such views on the grounds that under socialism a large population was a great resource, not a threat. Consequently, some of the most prominent proponents of birth control were labelled rightists and removed from power… by the time Mao died in 1976, China’s population exceeded 900 million." -Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (2010). The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, p. 327. In the future, we will likely see an even larger devastation of the environment from India and other countries with large and growing populations.
    - richardknop 9y ago
      Well yes, I agree with you. China, India and don't forget about Africa (most countries in Africa now have average age around 20-25 years old and are multiplying populations very quickly). Not sure what can be done about it. I guess mother nature will sort that out once we run out of resources. It will be like a defensive reaction of an organism, human race might just get purged from the Earth.
      - thanksgiving 9y ago
        I don't want children. I imagine I'm not the only one. Get a dog or a cat or a goldfish or a cactus instead.
        richardknop 9y ago
        99.9% of people disagree with you. You might not be the only one but you are part of tiny minority which doesn't influence anything. For every person like you who doesn't want kids there are hundred families somewhere in developing world with 5-8 children.
        andrewaylett 9y ago
        Not as many as you might think: Total Fertility Rate drops rapidly as survival rate and economic activity picks up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/File:Trends_in_TFR_1950-2050.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/Fi...
        elygre 9y ago
        Hans Rosling had a great TED talk or two on the subject!
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - thriftwy 9y ago
- gozur88 9y ago
  You're underestimating the amount of pollution other countries produced during industrialization. There used to be rivers in the US that were flammable because manufacturers discharges so many volatile effluents into them. London's "killer fog" is quite famous, and Russia's Lake Karachay still holds the distinction as the most polluted spot on earth. Sure, China affects its neighbors. China is a big country compared to Sweden.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    England was so polluted that the wildlife evolved dark camouflage to blend in with soot covered trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
  - cannonedhamster 9y ago
    Pulping and paper plants in the Northeast US used to dump all kinds of junk into rivers. You could tell what color paper was being printed by what color the river was. Lots of really toxic things were done by the US on their way to where they are now.
- cknoxrun 9y ago
  It hasn't just industrialized though, it's taken on massive scale manufacturing of almost all forms of goods for almost every nation on Earth.
  - oblio 9y ago
    At their scale that's how industrialization works :) And so far not even that was enough to lift 1/3rd of their population out of poverty...
- jdietrich 9y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is complete bunkum. Europe has spent spent decades dealing with major cross-border pollution issues. Sulphur emitted by British and German coal power plants was destroying Polish forests until those emissions were curbed by international agreements. Rivers across the continent were running green with algae because of eutrophication caused by fertiliser run-off and discharges of untreated sewage. There are still major issues with cross-border emissions of persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals. There's nothing unique about China's environmental problems. Every nation in Europe was at least as dirty during their own industrial revolutions. A hundred years ago, every building in urban Britain was jet black with soot. In 1952, the great smog of London killed 4000 people and brought the whole city to a standstill. The urban pollution in modern China would be entirely familiar to any elderly Briton. China are making great steps to remedy their environmental problems. They're a leading investor in solar, battery and nuclear technology. They industrialised faster than the west and now they're cleaning up the mess faster than we did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Long-Range_Transboundary_Air_Pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Long-Range_Trans...
  - whatyoucantsay 9y ago
    You should be sorry. China's pork industry alone generates over a billion tonnes of waste per year, accounts for about half of the nitrogen and over 90% of the phosphorus waste put into the South China Sea, is a major portion of world methane pollution and may well be the single largest vector of antibiotic resistant bacteria the world has ever seen. And that's just one industry. Comparing the scale of this environmental destruction with anything humanity did 100-200 years ago is what is, as you put it, "compete bunkum".
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      The environmental impacts of the US beef industry are in the same ballpark as the Chinese pork industry. Due to the shift towards feedlot production, it has been getting dirtier in most respects over recent decades. Antibiotic use as a growth promoter is still legal and ubiquitous in the US. America's CO2 emissions per capita are still more than twice that of China. The Chinese government is clearly taking major steps to curb their resource use and their environmental impact; the current US administration is repealing environmental regulations en masse and has seriously mooted abolishing the EPA altogether. China has some serious environmental problems, there's no debate about that. The problem is when China is painted as a unique or extreme environmental villain, which is simply untrue. China's environmental regulations currently lag behind the west by a few decades, but they're making meaningful progress in the right direction. http://www.sustainabletable.org/906/waste-management http://www.sustainabletable.org/906/waste-management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Sure. Every year they say they will, but it is sort of like a crackdown that lasts for a week or two before everything goes back to normal again. China doesn’t need another crackdown, they need sustained and consistent rule of law.
Feniks 9y ago
Yep. Wasn't until the 70s that chemical and nuclear waste stopped being dumped in landfills and the sea.

It sounds like China is starting to crack down. It's a luxury you have once you're affluent enough. The bootstrapping process is sadly very dirty everywhere that it's happened.

whatyoucantsay 9y ago

> The bootstrapping process is sadly very dirty everywhere that it's happened. Not on the scale China's has been. Their environmental destruction has been on such a scale that nearby countries, even those separated by ocean, have greatly impacted air quality and the oceans themselves have been greatly affected. Sweden wasn't wreaking Poland's skies and waters as it industrialised.

richardknop 9y ago
> Sweden wasn't wreaking Poland's skies and waters as it industrialised. Citation needed. But just using logic, Sweden has about 10 million people today. During industrialization it probably had much less (there was a population explosion in Europe after WW2). Let's say Sweden had 5 million people. Industrializing country of 5 million of people vs industrializing country of 1-1.5 billion is something which is ridiculous to compare. Imagine trying to industrialize double or triple of Europe from agrarian society again and tell me you think it would be clean and tidy process.
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago
  More ridiculous is the idea that a nation deserves extra credit for being ridiculously overpopulated. In China's case, it's doubly absurd given that the CCP strong-armed an already too large populace into having more children for decades before wisely but again brutally reversing course with its famous one child policy. > "The 1950s census showed that China had 557 million people, and some professionally-trained demographers began urging that policies be put in place to limit population growth. Mao Zedong condemned such views on the grounds that under socialism a large population was a great resource, not a threat. Consequently, some of the most prominent proponents of birth control were labelled rightists and removed from power… by the time Mao died in 1976, China’s population exceeded 900 million." -Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (2010). The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, p. 327. In the future, we will likely see an even larger devastation of the environment from India and other countries with large and growing populations.
  - richardknop 9y ago
    Well yes, I agree with you. China, India and don't forget about Africa (most countries in Africa now have average age around 20-25 years old and are multiplying populations very quickly). Not sure what can be done about it. I guess mother nature will sort that out once we run out of resources. It will be like a defensive reaction of an organism, human race might just get purged from the Earth.
    - thanksgiving 9y ago
      I don't want children. I imagine I'm not the only one. Get a dog or a cat or a goldfish or a cactus instead.
      - richardknop 9y ago
        99.9% of people disagree with you. You might not be the only one but you are part of tiny minority which doesn't influence anything. For every person like you who doesn't want kids there are hundred families somewhere in developing world with 5-8 children.
        andrewaylett 9y ago
        Not as many as you might think: Total Fertility Rate drops rapidly as survival rate and economic activity picks up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/File:Trends_in_TFR_1950-2050.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/Fi...
        elygre 9y ago
        Hans Rosling had a great TED talk or two on the subject!
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - thriftwy 9y ago
gozur88 9y ago
You're underestimating the amount of pollution other countries produced during industrialization. There used to be rivers in the US that were flammable because manufacturers discharges so many volatile effluents into them. London's "killer fog" is quite famous, and Russia's Lake Karachay still holds the distinction as the most polluted spot on earth. Sure, China affects its neighbors. China is a big country compared to Sweden.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  England was so polluted that the wildlife evolved dark camouflage to blend in with soot covered trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
- cannonedhamster 9y ago
  Pulping and paper plants in the Northeast US used to dump all kinds of junk into rivers. You could tell what color paper was being printed by what color the river was. Lots of really toxic things were done by the US on their way to where they are now.
cknoxrun 9y ago
It hasn't just industrialized though, it's taken on massive scale manufacturing of almost all forms of goods for almost every nation on Earth.
- oblio 9y ago
  At their scale that's how industrialization works :) And so far not even that was enough to lift 1/3rd of their population out of poverty...
jdietrich 9y ago
I'm sorry, but this is complete bunkum. Europe has spent spent decades dealing with major cross-border pollution issues. Sulphur emitted by British and German coal power plants was destroying Polish forests until those emissions were curbed by international agreements. Rivers across the continent were running green with algae because of eutrophication caused by fertiliser run-off and discharges of untreated sewage. There are still major issues with cross-border emissions of persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals. There's nothing unique about China's environmental problems. Every nation in Europe was at least as dirty during their own industrial revolutions. A hundred years ago, every building in urban Britain was jet black with soot. In 1952, the great smog of London killed 4000 people and brought the whole city to a standstill. The urban pollution in modern China would be entirely familiar to any elderly Briton. China are making great steps to remedy their environmental problems. They're a leading investor in solar, battery and nuclear technology. They industrialised faster than the west and now they're cleaning up the mess faster than we did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Long-Range_Transboundary_Air_Pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Long-Range_Trans...
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago
  You should be sorry. China's pork industry alone generates over a billion tonnes of waste per year, accounts for about half of the nitrogen and over 90% of the phosphorus waste put into the South China Sea, is a major portion of world methane pollution and may well be the single largest vector of antibiotic resistant bacteria the world has ever seen. And that's just one industry. Comparing the scale of this environmental destruction with anything humanity did 100-200 years ago is what is, as you put it, "compete bunkum".
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    The environmental impacts of the US beef industry are in the same ballpark as the Chinese pork industry. Due to the shift towards feedlot production, it has been getting dirtier in most respects over recent decades. Antibiotic use as a growth promoter is still legal and ubiquitous in the US. America's CO2 emissions per capita are still more than twice that of China. The Chinese government is clearly taking major steps to curb their resource use and their environmental impact; the current US administration is repealing environmental regulations en masse and has seriously mooted abolishing the EPA altogether. China has some serious environmental problems, there's no debate about that. The problem is when China is painted as a unique or extreme environmental villain, which is simply untrue. China's environmental regulations currently lag behind the west by a few decades, but they're making meaningful progress in the right direction. http://www.sustainabletable.org/906/waste-management http://www.sustainabletable.org/906/waste-management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

Sure. Every year they say they will, but it is sort of like a crackdown that lasts for a week or two before everything goes back to normal again. China doesn’t need another crackdown, they need sustained and consistent rule of law.

Feniks 9y ago

Yep. Wasn't until the 70s that chemical and nuclear waste stopped being dumped in landfills and the sea.