China’s pollution overload

China’s carbon emissions have almost doubled in five years By Sally Tang, Socialist Action (CWI Hong Kong). This article first appeared in Socialism Today (July/August 2013), the magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI in England and Wales). People in China’s cities are choking on smog. This past winter the capital Beijing, and other northern cities, suffered their worst air pollution readings on record. In mid-January the US embassy in Beijing, which irritates the Chinese regime by publishing its own widely watched statistics, said levels of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that can lodge in the lungs causing serious damage, were 40 times the safe level set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). On an expressway linking Beijing to Hong Kong and Macau, there were 40 car accidents in nine hours due to smog reducing visibility. The main causes of air pollution in China are coal burning, cars, construction sites, and the expansion of industry. China’s coal consumption has seen explosive growth, to 4.05 billion tons last year. China now burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined. Since the failed Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, China’s carbon emissions have almost doubled. Facemasks are common in cities today. Air purifiers are also popular products for those who can afford them. Mike Murphy, CEO of Swiss company IQAir in China, says sales of household air purifiers tripled in the first months of this year. The lifestyles of children have also changed a lot: schools cancel outdoor activities; parents keep their kids at home. Rich families choose international schools as these have spent money on air filtering systems. People are perplexed by the worsening air quality over the last couple of years. Improvements promised by the government have not materialised. Less than 1% of China’s 500 biggest cities meet WHO air-quality guidelines. According to the World Bank, 750,000 people die prematurely because of air pollution every year. Parents are worried about the health of their children. Some company executives speak of a trend of losing talented people, as some middle-class and upper-class parents, and foreigners, are leaving China because of the pollution. But for most of the population – farmers, migrant workers and the poor – there is no choice but to stay and live with it. In June, premier Li Keqiang announced ten new measures aimed at improving air quality, in an attempt to dampen popular anxiety. Heavy polluters must release detailed environmental information to the general public, and the government vowed to reduce major emissions at heavily polluting industries by more than 30% by the end of 2017. But similar promises have been made before and Li’s new measures contradict government efforts to maintain economic growth at 7-8%. The Chinese ‘Communist’ Party (CCP) state does not have a unified position on these issues, however. Local governments pursue their own interests often in defiance of Beijing’s orders. They manipulate statistics and try to suppress information, including the protests against polluting industries. Earlier this year, over 16,000 dead pigs were found floating in the Huangpu river, which supplies one in five Shanghai residents with drinking water. The pigs were dumped by farmers upstream in Jiaxing, a major pig-farming region in neighbouring Zhejiang province. A few weeks later, the same area saw the outbreak of a new bird flu virus, H7N9, which has so far killed 37 people. The WHO warns this is “one of the most lethal flu viruses”. Both examples show the dire effects of a farming industry run for profit: unsafe and over-crowded conditions, abuse of antibiotics and other chemicals. Researchers have uncovered abusive use of antibiotics in large quantities at major pig farms, with cocktails of drugs used. Some farmers feed organic arsenic to pigs as it makes them look pink and shiny, meaning more profits, despite the fact organic arsenic is a carcinogen. The environmental ministry admitted for the first time, in a report issued in February this year, the existence of ‘cancer villages’ in China – with cancer rates high above the national average. This phenomenon has been recognised since 1998, but is denied by the CCP authorities. But this report was denounced as ‘inappropriate’ by top health officials at the March meeting of the National People’s Congress (China’s fake parliament). Instructions were sent out to local media to avoid using the term ‘cancer villages’. Industrial pollution of drinking water, usually by factories built upstream, is the main cause of cancer villages. The factories discharge untreated sewage, containing high levels of heavy metals or other toxic substances, resulting in clusters of cancer illness. There are now 459 cancer villages in China, while the national death rate from cancer has increased 80% in the past 30 years to 2.7 million fatalities every year. Rural China has also seen outbreaks of lead poisoning as a result of factories and smelters that dump their waste into rivers and landfills. Lead poisoning causes brain, kidney, liver, and nerve damage, and children are especially susceptible. In recent years, thousands of individual cases have been reported across at least nine provinces. A Human Rights Watch report in 2011 accused government officials of “arbitrarily limiting lead testing, withholding and possibly manipulating test results, denying proper treatment to children and adults and trying to silence parents and activists”. The economic boom in China over the last 30 years has produced an acute environmental crisis. The country is grappling with seriously polluted air, water, land and food. According to a 2013 report, of the ten most polluted cities in the world, China has seven, including Beijing. The crisis of contaminated food – rice, milk powder, cooking oil, vegetables, fruits, etc – leaves nobody unaffected. News reports in May revealed that nearly half the rice sold in Guangdong, China’s richest province, contained unsafe levels of cadmium, which causes cancer. The government has hundreds of special farms supplying safe crops to the elite. This reinforces a vicious cycle of government inaction over pollution combined with repression against the victims. In 2008, a toxic milk powder scandal caused the death of six babies and resulted in tens of thousands of children getting kidney disease. The government used repression to silence parents’ groups who wanted to find out the truth behind the affair. Zhao Lianhai, whose own child was a victim, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail because of his activism on this issue. An official report showed that 90% of all environmental protests in 2012 were linked to water pollution. It found that 57.3% of the groundwater in 198 cities in 2012 was ‘bad’ or ‘extremely bad’. One third of rivers and 75% of lakes are seriously polluted, and around 1,000 lakes have disappeared. Unsafe drinking water is being used by 320 million people, and 190 million are sick every year due to water pollution. The last two years have seen a big increase in environmental protests in China. In cities including Dalian, Tianjin, Xiamen and Kunming, thousands have protested against the building or running of chemical plants. The re-emergence of capitalism in China combines the worst features of neo-liberal capitalism together with repressive one-party dictatorship. It means chaos and an absence of even minimal democratic controls. China now leads the world in the production of solar voltaic cells and wind turbines, but around two-thirds of capacity from its wind farms is wasted as the electricity grid lacks the technology to absorb it. The solar industry, which is mainly for export, has built up vast overcapacity and is also a huge consumer of coal power. A socialist solution is needed in order to solve this chaotic situation and to save millions of people’s lives – that is, the abolition of capitalism and democratic public control over the economy. With thanks to comrade Sally Tang, Socialist Action (CWI Hong Kong)

Happy fracking Christmas

This Christmas fracking is back on the menu. The profiteering exercise of extracting shail gas from rocks is back and ready to rake in profit for the capitalists. Fracking in Britain was suspended after earthquakes were caused around Blackpool by fracking operations, but the moratorium soon ends. In the US, a 5.7 magnitude earthquake occurred in Oklahoma, while a Geological Survey report concludes that: most, "if not all of the earthquakes [in the USA] since August 2001 have been triggered by the deep injection of wastewater" in fracking. 60% of Britain's countryside could potentially be exploited for shale gas as Osborne looks to Texas - which produces more CO2 emissions than all but the top six countries in the world. Texas has 48,000 jobs relying on fracking. Osborne intends to water down Britain's commitments to cutting emissions and threatens renewable energy programmes, which, if properly pursued, would create as many jobs as fracking does in the USA, while saving the environment rather than wrecking it. Eight million gallons of water and carcinogenic chemicals are used to frack a well, then disposed of deep in the earth, where they contaminate groundwater and poison the surroundings. Methane released into groundwater by fracking rises through fissures and water wells where it can be ignited at the tap. US reports claim over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases of "sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water." David Kennedy, who heads the statutory body advising the government on meeting its carbon reduction goals, severely criticised Osborne's announcement, saying the dash for gas through fracking, "would not be sensible, or compatible with meeting carbon budgets and the 2050 target" and would damage investment in renewable. The UK target is to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, compared with 1990 levels. David Cameron consequently vetoed Kennedy's appointment to a post heading the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Osborne's government puts energy company profits before the welfare of the planet. This is the cheapest way for gas companies to find energy. It’s time to end the lie that the con-dems are the greenest government yet it’s time to end this all for profit motive and end the rule of this illegitimate government who have no mandate to govern even less to tear up our environment for their friends pockets. with extracts tkane from the excellent article in this weeks socialist on fracking by pete mason.

The extreme weather of late

So i just read on the bbc news that 800 people are known to have died in Brazil with a further 400 presumed dead or missing. With just last month and still now there have been some terrible floods in Queensland in Austrlia where they have had droughts for years and years now under huge amounts of water.

In brazilThe Brazilian government has said it will set up an early warning system to alert communities of impending danger.

The flooding is considered the worst natural disaster Brazil has ever experienced.

According to figures compiled by the newspaper O Globo, a third of all victims were under age.

The youngest fatality was a five-day-old baby buried in a mudslide in Nova Friburgo, the worst affected town with 324 dead.

Continuing danger

The number of missing has been declining as forensic experts identify more bodies, but rescue workers fear the full extent of the disaster is not yet known, with some remote communities still only reachable by helicopter.


Funeral workers said some dogs were guarding their owners' graves for days Emergency workers say their priority is to make sure no new deaths occur.

They are warning of the risks of contaminated water.

Three people are known to have contracted leptospirosis, an infectious bacterial disease, which is caused by exposure to water contaminated with rats' urine.

In Teresopolis, doctors have been administering thousands of tetanus vaccines.

In Sao Jose do Vale, workers were erecting more than a hundred tents sent from the UK to house those whose homes were swept away or flooded.

Volunteers in Rio de Janeiro held an adoption fair in the hope of re-homing some of the 5,000 animals left without owners as a result of the disaster.

The government has allocated $240m (£150m) in emergency reconstruction money for the area.


Two points really one is are these more frequent natural disasters a natural problem that we cant do much about or is this another consequence of global warming affecting us now. As my blogpost earlier detailed the affect of capitalism and industralisation is having such a huge impact on our planet and i still dont think we have seen the true consequences of all this.

The trouble is alot of these disasters that mostly the west and now China now are creating due to excessive pollution into the earth's atmosphere over a number of years most of the natural disasters are happening to 3rd world or developing countries who have little infrustructure to deal with large scale disaster. From teh article from the bbc i just posted above the small fund the brazilian government can give to disasters like this is low compared to if this kind of disaster happened in the western world. I do conceed that when America and New orleans faced wide spread flooding and destruction after hurricane Katrina they to were slow to react but i partly think that was down to them not being ready or prepared properly not lack of funds.

But my second point is that howcomes disasters in the 3rd and developing worlds recieve such little attention in our news these days ? Our news seems very biased towards western based news stories and rarely make a big deal of disasters like this i have just posted. Why is this do we think ?

link to bbc article on brazilian floods :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12263166?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter