Contents: One Global Apocalypse. Made in the USA; Assembled in China.

[GliderGuider]

This long, sobering article gives the clearest description I've read so far of how China is destroying itself and taking the world along for the ride. As if we hadn't created enough of a planetary predicament on our own, China's irresponsible, intransigent industrialization is now resolutely tightening the global garrote.

Over the last decade I've become inured to the emotional impact of report after article after story detailing the shape, size and speed of the ecological tsunami that is now lapping over our knees. This story is the first one in a year or more than has broken through my carefully maintained defensive dike of detachment, and allowed the murky grey waters of despair to flood in.

You know how we doomers say it's always worse than we thought? It's even worse than that. Far, far worse.

China's Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse

In March 2008, Li and other farmers in Gaolong, a village in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, told a Washington Post reporter that workers from the nearby Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Company had been dumping this industrial waste in fields around their village every day for nine months. The liquid, silicon tetrachloride, was the byproduct of polysilicon production and it is a highly toxic substance. When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride turns into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people dizzy and cause breathing difficulties.

Reckless dumping of industrial waste is everywhere in China. But what caught the attention of The Washington Post was that the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Company was a "green energy" company producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. Indeed, it was a major supplier to Suntech Power Holdings, then the world's leading producer of solar panels, and Suntech's founder, Shi Zhengrong, topped the Hunrun list of the richest people in China in 2008.

China's rise has come at a horrific social and environmental cost. It's difficult to grasp the demonic violence and wanton recklessness of China's profit-driven assault on nature and on the Chinese themselves. Ten years ago, in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine in March 2005, Pan Yue, China's eloquent, young vice-minister of China's State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) told the magazine, "the Chinese miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace." Pan Yue added:

We are using too many raw materials to sustain [our] growth ... Our raw materials are scarce, we don't have enough land, and our population is constantly growing. Currently there [are] 1.3 billion people living in China, that's twice as many as 50 years ago. In 2020 there will be 1.5 billion ... but desert areas are expanding at the same time; habitable and usable land has been halved over the past 50 years ... Acid rain is falling on one third of Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner ... Because air and water are polluted, we are losing between 8 and 15 percent of our gross domestic product. And that doesn't include the costs for health ... In Beijing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment.

And criticizing Western economists who reassure us that more growth is the key to repairing the environmental damage done from growth, Pan said:

And there is yet another mistake ... It's the assumption that economic growth will give us the financial resources to cope with the crises surrounding the environment, raw materials, and population growth. [But] there won't be enough money, and we are simply running out of time. Developed countries with a per capita gross national product of $8,000 to $10,000 can afford that, but we cannot. Before we reach $4,000 per person, different crises in all shapes and forms will hit us. Economically we won't be strong enough to overcome them.

Pan Yue's searing honesty got him sidelined but if anything, he understated the speed, ferocity and scale of China's ecological destruction, a destruction that extends far beyond China itself.

[Gregorian]

1. Yep. Insanity. Shitting in our own nest. So just for that, it's my turn to do something for you.

Today I found an interesting site that addresses the detachment and acceptance that you have promoted when confronted with my questions. Maybe it will be of some value.

http://www.calmdownmind.com/

[GliderGuider]

3. Thank you! it looks perfect.

[Demeter]

2. The Industrialization of China is already coming to an abrupt halt

and as it collapses, the Chinese ecology will attempt to right itself.

If there are spots that cannot, that part of the land or sea will rid itself of life.

This will provide no-man's land shrinking the available land. The people will either die or rebel, bringing down the government/economy to a sustainable system.

It's not going to turn around overnight, but it will turn. Will it turn fast enough?

One clue for the searchers--a carbon tax will have absolutely no effect, other than raising the global blood pressure and further impoverishing the 99%.

[GliderGuider]

4. Nitrogen emissions in smog threatens to 'massacre' world's forests: Chinese scientists

Nitrogen emissions in smog threatens to 'massacre' world's forests: Chinese scientists

Thick smog could kill off most southern China's natural forests within decades and threatens trees around the world unless nations take action, say scientists.

A 13-year study by Chinese scientists has revealed strong evidence to show the danger is being caused by nitrogen emissions in the atmosphere.

"It is a silent massacre," said Dr Lu Xiankai, associate researcher at Chinese Academy of Sciences' South China Botanical Garden in Guangzhou and a lead scientist of the project.

At one observation point in Dinghu Mountain, Zhaoqing , more than a dozen plant species growing below an old tree had died off until only one or two were left, and the tree could be next to go if the "nitrogen fallout" from smog continued, Lu said.

The study, published in this month's Environmental Science and Technology journal, run by the American Chemical Society, said the scientists took more than a decade to find solid evidence that smog is killing off trees.

Nitrogen is one of the most important causes for the formation of smog. Many human activities, such as industrial production and vehicle exhaust emissions, pump large quantities of nitrogen into the atmosphere.

For most of our history we have had a world of plentiful resources: many fish in the sea, many trees in the forest, clean fresh water. That and more is all gone. We have stepped off the map of history into uncharted territory.

[GliderGuider]

5. Lucky for us this is driving down the cost of solar power. Amiright?

Halle-fucking-lujah!

This is why I am so deeply contemptuous of the intellectually bankrupt solar power priesthood.