From China, With Love?

How about moving to Mars? Is there a heaven? Nice post Lyn. Our generation didn't do too well for our planet.

and probably also people suffered as it appeared locally.

An entire school had to be relocated, after birth defects, illness and deaths.

Was it the refinery, the electric power plant or the chemical plant? Choose a location as many probably fit in the story. To get our planet back in shape. we all need to live healthier lifes, less luxurious and use a lot less energy.

All indicators show that it goes very wrong. The next generation, even more than the baby boomer have been spoiled, yes by us.

Poor planet earth has to supply for more and more people. With more and more "needs"?

Thanks europium, that answered my first question. "If their pollution is coming here, where is ours going?"

I think our fingers are still too dirty, to be pointing at someone else.

Oh, come on.

We could at least plead ignorance, when we started this all.

Wait, it was those Englanders who started the whole mess with those soot belching steam engines. Let's blame them.

China knows what this is doing and just doesn't care.

I concede that we've just moved the source of some pollution from point A to point B.

No need to leave us out of the loop; our coal is just finding it's way home.

We pretend we're responsible stewards of the planet, by shutting down it's use here in the US. I think they call it hypocrisy.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=8490

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-coal-idUSBRE83I0AK20120419

Avarice!

No, it was those Vikings with their carelessly leaving handfuls of small artifacts behind on U.S. and Canadian soil. Worse, those Celts and their stone thingies. My God, what were they thinking!

And the arrowhead waste found all over the American Southwest and elsewhere? I mean, that stuff has been here for tens of thousands of years and will be here for who knows how long? What's the half-life of a broken arrowhead?

Seriously, though, even if everyone created next to no pollution per each action taken, there are 7 billion of us conducting uncountable numbers of actions, so there will be pollution. However, we have made great strides in my lifetime. Coal fired electrical plants are polluters, but less so than every home burning coal. First world water is cleaner and air is cleaner than 50 years ago. Species thought to be extinct are being seen in the wild again.

Perfect? No, there's still lots of room for improvement. Pollution from China? Just a reminder that we need to be systems thinkers. Or, as John Muir aptly put it, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

One of the largest polluters in all of north America was and is the INCO Ni plants in Sudbury, putting up a stack that would disperse the effluents all over the northeast and Europe. And they are still doing it, along with all the other mines and processes or ore in Canada, so let's not get testy on the bad boys down south.

Additionally, I agree with the base forum that we are experiencing pollution from Asia, but let's add one more to it. Pollution from the middle east in the name of flares, so abundant that they are seen from space. Of course we shouldn't put down the ME sponsors of the high prices of everything or they will cut off our supply or jack up the price some more? Let's get real. There is technology out there that will allow collection and use of all the flared gases and other junk that is being flared. But governments don't want to cause corporations to reduce profits for obvious reasons. And the ME doesn't care about pollution concerns to the rest of the world as they don't figure it will hit them.

There is enough energy in the flared gases from oil operations to produce all the metals made in steel plants in the world and the technology has been there for years.

Let's not leave out the flare gas being burned in N. Dakota.

We won't even talk about fracking and the 5 million gallons of water per well that each well consumes.

A Mysterious Patch Of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark ...

Whoa!!

Where are they getting all that water?

I heard that number on NPR today and discovered it may be high. It may only be 2-3 million gallons per well.

From:

Volume of water used for fracking in - Boulder Daily Camera

"The Colorado Oil and Gas Association estimates the industry will use 6.5 trillion gallons this year -- just over one-tenth of a percent of total water use in the state."

From:

PART I: What 20 Months of Water Consumption for Fracking in the ...

That may not be such a bad thing. If you consider that with the melting of the polar ice cap and the anticipated rise in the sea level of 3-4 feet, the amount of coast line that would go underwater around the world could create a major problem for all coastal countries. We could think of it as "sequestration" of water until the melting of the ice cap is reversed or at least minimized and preventing the predicted sea level rise.

Countries. Who needs 'em? Pah!

If you look on the maps of the super rich, there are no political boundaries. Just one big playground.

Political boundaries. Who needs 'em? Pah!

We ship tons and tons of lead acid batteries to Mexico, and Canada too I think, for reclamation for this reason.

Isn't that why we ship all of this crap to other countries? We weren't supposed to have all of the pollution and waste in the US...our own country...but now it just comes back home to roost.

I mean, we are the world's largest importer...and most of our stuff (crap we don't need) is made in China...so why shouldn't they "share" the result of all that manufacturing with the end users?

Besides...it's just California...who really cares? _{my sister would kill me for that}

USBPort writes: "Is this another case of nature not obeying the scientists' model of the atmosphere?"

It's Chinese ozone. They're working on it.

"That's criminally stupid."

And the criminals are exceeding rich consequently, but what do they care? To them there are no political boundaries, no sense of nationality and no concern for those living within those boundaries. Look on the maps of the super-rich and you see a very different world: the boundaries are economic ones, the colors those of profits and return-on-investments. Theirs is a world of boardroom and backroom deals, and no responsibility toward anyone but themselves. What do they care if millions die directly, or die later from pollution-induced birth defects, disease, starvation? Truly! What do they care? Not one single iota! To them the world's teeming billions are just so much grist for their mills. If millions die, so what? After all, there's more where they came from, yes? It is Psychopathy writ large, at its most extreme.

Ummm, yeah. That's been the plot of most of the movies Hollywood has made the past 20 years. Mostly BS, but it sells a lot of popcorn and Coca Cola.

"Mostly BS, but it sells a lot of popcorn and Coca Cola."

I take it you know this as a result of your thorough investigations into the matter? The BS part, I mean, whilst ignoring companies like Monsanto and Bechtel and countless others whose practices worldwide paint a picture so gruesome not even Hollywood can compete? Of multinationals moving operations to countries whose environmental oversight is minimal or lacking altogether, with the consequences we're seeing now in China and elsewhere? To places like Brownsville, Texas, just over the border, in Mexico, where these industries have been deliberately located so that they are free to pollute at will and with no accountability whatsoever nor concern for whom it may harm, just so long as their owners' bank accounts swell at acceptable rates?

All thanks to Hollywood, eh, all for the sake of selling more popcorn and Coca Cola. Next you'll be telling me the entire 9/11 debacle was filmed there, as well, in Hollywood. You know, to sell yet more popcorn and Coca Cola? A real blockbuster, that one! Whom are you really trying to convince with your 'Coke & Popcorn' theory, USBPort? You? You'll have to do a lot better than that to convince me, I'm afraid. I can tell you that right now. Here, how's about your substantiating your BS claims? As good a place to start as any I suppose.

Best regards.

While much of what you say is true, it is not without irony.

All developing countries foster this behavior, not because they consider their people expendable, but because they consider their people poor and in need of economic parity.

Once a country achieves prosperity, government controls tighten, sending would be polluters to as yet undeveloped economies, where they are welcomed with open arms and more open regulations.

You are blaming the companies, I find fault with the Governments. Yes, ironically I find fault with a Government looking to improve the life of it's citizenry. Do you?

As China completes it's development, we are likely to see more of this.

It's a mix of good intentions on the part of governments looking after their own, and of key decision-makers sometimes (possibly quite often) finding their hands being greased with offers they can't refuse and/or having to pay the piper for the fact that, were it not for some of these companies' efforts behind-the-scenes, they would not be in office at all. Depending on the players in question, it may even involve military action, coups and so forth. It's a dirty business, no doubt about it. Literally and figuratively.

Oh, it's not Hollywood...it's real

Big Business is the Gov't, the Gov't is Big Business...

It's that whole Massive Dynamics and the X-Files thing in real life...

After having worked for the gov't for over 25 years and spending some time with General Dyanamics and working with companies like AT&T, Lucent, E-Systems, Loral, GE, Ensco, Anteon, Qinetiq, Lockheed-Martin, Halliburton, KBR, and a plethora of others I can say that witnessing this stuff first hand can be nothing short of amazing. I have often walked away from things much bigger than myself, shaking my head in disdain.

I really do often wonder why these things happen when they are so obvious to people like me...makes me sick.

I think that your response deserves a GA because I've been saying the same thing for years. The EPA and state DEP's have been closing Industries in the USA because they establish standards practically beyond current engineering practices. These standards are often the result of younger, inexperienced newly graduated people going into those agencies and "laying down the law" without regard to the broader picture. Shutting down something here in the USA that has an 85% efficiency in pollution elimination while demanding it meet 95% in counterproductive to the environment when the replacement source is in China or Mexico or some other 3rd world nation that only cleans up 25 to 30% of its pollution. It's a major NIMBY to not realize that what goes up eventually does come down and in this case our back yard is in Washington. Oregon and California.

MUWAA HA HA!!!

我们的计划是几乎完全!!!

Ah, yes! The population reduction scheme!

Lyn,

I lived and worked in China from 1996-2010. To answer your question: It will take another generation or two for them to sort themselves out so it looks like your last option is the most viable.

To put some scale on this, and the hey-we-did-it-they're-doing-it thing, (which actually China uses the you-did-it-we-can-do-it-too thing), in 1950 the population of the US was roughly 150 million. China has nearly 10 times more souls. When I was there they were opening a new coal fired plant roughly every 2 weeks. In fairness the government knows they have a problem and knows something will have to be done about it. Just how and when I couldn't tell you.

I think I'll just hide in the hills of central Arkansas, and wait for the end to come.

Buddhists, agnostics and atheists have no soul...just ask them

The Taoists have it!

There is a solution, it's called Obama Heathcare.

You think I'm kidding? Look here and here and here for starters.

Lyn,

Just got an alert from American Citizen Services in Shanghai regarding the severe pollution being experienced in China at this time. I tried to copy the email content into this site but failed. Try http://shanghai.usembassy-china.org.cn

This just in:

(www.irishexaminer.com)