8/26/2007, "As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes," NY Times, J. Kahn, J. Yardley
"(Chinese) Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement is often tinged with corruption. This spring, officials in Yunnan Province in southern China beautified Laoshou Mountain, which had been used as a quarry, by spraying green paint over acres of rock. (p. 2 of 6) ...
"Beijing also insists that it will accept no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues that rich countries caused global warming and should find a way to solve it without impinging on China’s development....(p. 2 of 6)
"The toll this pollution has taken on human health remains a delicate topic in China. The leadership has banned publication of data on the subject for fear of inciting social unrest, said scholars involved in the research. (p. 3 of 6, bottom)
"Senior leaders are either too timid to enforce their orders, or the fast-growth political culture they preside over is too entrenched to heed them....China’s authoritarian system has repeatedly proved its ability to suppress political threats to Communist Party rule. But its failure to realize its avowed goals of balancing economic growth and environmental protection is a sign that the country’s environmental problems are at least partly systemic, many experts and some government officials say.
China cannot go green, in other words, without political change....(p. 5 of 6, bottom)
"Today, a culture of collusion between government and business has made all but the most pro-growth government policies hard to enforce."...(p. 6 of 6. 2nd para.)
"Officials have rejected proposals to introduce surcharges on electricity and coal to reflect the true cost to the environment. The state still controls the price of fuel oil, including gasoline, subsidizing the cost of driving. (p. 6)
"Energy and environmental officials have little influence in the bureaucracy. The environmental agency still has only about 200 full-time employees, compared with 18,000 at the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. "...
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It's taboo to mention that Communist China is a source of other countries' pollution problems. (sub-head, 'Chinese air pollution goes abroad')
7/20/2007, "Huge Dust Plumes From China Cause Changes in Climate," NY Times, Robert Lee Hotz
"On some days, almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia. With it comes up to three-quarters of the black carbon particulate pollution that reaches the West Coast, Dr. Ramanathan and his colleagues recently reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
This transcontinental pollution is part of a growing global traffic in dust and aerosol particles made worse by drought and deforestation, said Steven Cliff, who studies the problem at the University of California at Davis."...
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