China's Poison for the Planet

(source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,461828,00.html)
China's Poison for the Planet
Can the environment withstand China's growing economic might?
As one of the planet's worst polluters, Beijing's ecological sins
are creating problems on a global scale.
Many countries are now feeling the consequences

The cloud of dirt was hard
to make out from the ground,
but at an altitude of 32,808 feet,
the scientists could see the
gigantic mass of ozone, dust
and soot with the naked eye.

The ecological *disaster* strolls hand in hand
with China’s economic *miracle*

It’s tempting to point a stink-finger of blame towards China. As China’s ecological disaster careens out of control, their ecological problems should underscore a global problem we all share. China acts as a beacon to capture the attention of the global community. China’s miracle economy provides a stop-frame animation of the same path that every other industrialized nation of the world has traveled. What they are showing us is an alarming and ugly picture that mimics the growth of every industrial economy in the world. The picture is jarring because of the compressed time. But the picture is remarkably familiar. There is certainly plenty of room for China to soften her environmental footprint. The question that remains is whether these issues will be addressed with the same enthusiasm shown during China’s economic explosion.

The more cheap Chinese goods
the world's consumers buy,
the bigger the price will be
that the world pays for
China's economic miracle.

The global community shares culpability with China. Worldwide greed for cheap consumer goods and greedy margins have inspired a feeding frenzy among the industrialized nations of the world. China’s explosive growth has had an international impact on both economics and environments around the globe. Manufacturing facilities located in nations that shrug-off environmental issues and decline to saddle industry with the encumbrance of environmental responsibility are able to manufacture goods in an atmosphere where overseas regulation makes it impossible for responsible industry to compete. Responsible industry is a costly endeavor. The high costs of operating responsible industry has driven investment abroad where goods can be produced at a fraction of what it costs in other parts of the world. Part of the engine that drives China’s economy is their ability to produce inexpensive goods for the global market. If worldwide standards were imposed, China’s cheap exports would be met with competition from abroad. China’s fast-paced economics, like their environmental issues, are out-of-control. Market regulations would slow their economic growth, growth that is overburdening an environment that is buckling under the load. More importantly, a slight pause, a chance to fall back and re-group, would provide more stability. Without that stability, China’s economic infrastructure will fail.

Economic models that incorporate the use of free trade agreements, models that remove tariffs were originally designed to normalize trade. However, because huge gaps exist in wage and employment laws, health insurance, and environmental issues, free trade agreements have been the scourge of international trade, turning our overseas neighbors into a population of exploited workers whose labor, health, environment and basic human needs have been side-lined to feed the immense greed of politicorporate appetites.

Free trade agreements should be scrapped entirely, favoring instead Equal Trade Agreements where the ETA safeguards an honorable quality of living that elevates the proletariat, providing the same dignity and quality of life we reserve for ourselves. Worldwide minimum standards should reward every worker on the globe with basic human dignity. Whether you work a cash register at K-Mart in the United States or you work shoveling pig feces on a remote farm in China, we have a responsibility to insist on the dignity of the labor force on a worldwide scale.

Any worker, regardless of where they work or what they do, should enjoy the privilege of their work. They should have enough to provide good housing for their family, to own their own car, to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, to enjoy healthcare, to raise their families where safe, potable water and safe food isn’t considered a luxury. Worldwide, as we enter a period of globalization, doesn’t everybody deserve a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage?

How can any of us feel comfortable buying goods that were produced in parts of the world where the man who made our widgets might not have enough to feed his family? Where the man who made our widgets is washing his clothes in human excrement? Where the man who made our widgets is treated like a cog in some machine, where the man doesn’t matter at all?

In answering the global issues of pollution, the nations of the world need to adopt strict guidelines for industry, regardless of where those industries operate. Global environmental regulation should be standardized. Global pay scale should be standardized. Global human rights should be standardized. It is this lack of standards that has allowed irresponsible industry to be swallowed up by our neighbors in both China and India. Economically, it has proven a boom for China. Ecologically, the lack of global standards has proven disastrous for the world. We all have a significant stake in the protection of our shared world. In the meantime, while we pause to scratch our noggins and consider the bigger picture, Mother Nature works 24-7 and the…

Winds are blowing ever-greater
amounts of pollution from China
into Japan, leading many Japanese
to complain about irritated
eyes and throats

The winds are also blowing pollution across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast of the United States, and blowing clouds of pollution across the Mediterranean through Germany and the UK all the way out into the Atlantic Ocean as well. The consumer frenzy of the post-modern world is quickly financing the worldwide famine that will plague the 21st century.