We have followed the environmental meltdown in China which only recently moved to deal with a myriad of pollutants that have created cancer spikes and suffocating health conditions. Air pollution is the most obvious area of neglect and average Chinese are beginning to complain about pollution that continues to set records for unhealthy levels. I have previously discussed how my trips to China through the years have found horrendous levels of pollution where one is unable to see beyond half a block on some days in cities like Beijing. For decades, the authoritarian government posted false readings that became increasing comical, but sites like the one at the U.S. embassy has forced officials to admit to the alarming levels — as if the lack of line of sight vision did not already confirm the prior misrepresentations. This week, one regional capital, Harbin, has effectively shutdown due to levels of particulate pollution that would be considered unimaginable in many areas. Parts of Harbin are reporting levels of more than 1,000 PM2.5 — the level considered hazardous is 300. Thus, the city is over 300 percent higher than the hazardous level for human health.
Schools have been closed and people have been told to hunker down in their homes. What is interesting is that the level of pollution is taking on a political dimension. While China continues to censor news and control social media sites, there remains criticism on sites like Weibo. Citizens are discussing how the elite in government use public money to install expensive air cleaning systems in their offices and homes while the rest of China suck in the hazardous levels of pollutants. The Chinese government is clearly worried about the political dimension. You can only scare citizens so much when you are forcing them to breathe in poisons. At some point, they are going to refuse to go along with conditions that are clearly killing them.
Last week, the World Health Organization agency issued a report showing global deaths associated with air pollution. Not only did it link pollution to lung cancer but also bladder cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyon, France, also cited a link to heart disease. Governments often try to bury reports on the levels of actual deaths associated with air pollution. In this report, air pollution is linked to 223,000 deaths from lung cancer alone around the world in 2010. Particulate matter like that in China plays an equally hazardous role in deaths from cancer.
The level of pollution in Harbin — with 11 million people — has now exceeded the record set by Beijing last year.
With political power held in the hands of one party and a government that has long placed production ahead of every value, China is now a nightmare of a modern industrial wasteland. It would be interesting to see how the food and pollution scandals are affecting tourism. Cities like Harbin now look like some movie set of a post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland — not exactly an appealing prospect for most families.
Source: Yahoo
“In a global climate system what goes around comes around.”
Too true, Dredd–like pieces of houses from the tsunami in Japan, etc. Has the pollution in Seattle gone up since that first picture from the US embassy in China was taken? Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it had. Blech.
“In both countries the market is king and the large corporations run unchecked as long as they pay homage to the autocratic governments.”
That sounds more like corporatism than capitalism. Capitalism as I think David (and others) understand it would let those large corporations fail, not allow them to buy beneficial legislation or loopholes, not let them run roughshod over “the little people”, or “pay homage” to the government in the form of campaign donations.
Rand Paul would agree with you that large corporations should not be able to do those things:
“Federal bailouts reward inefficient and corrupt management, rob taxpayers, hurt smaller and more responsible private firms, exacerbate our budget problems, explode national debt, and destroy our US Dollar. Even more importantly, any bailout of private industry is in direct violation of the constitution. It is a transfer of wealth from those who have earned to those who have squandered.
The federal government has overstepped its enumerated powers as stipulated in the supreme law of the land.
Dr. Paul opposes all federal bailouts of private industry. He strongly criticized the $700 billion bank bailout, AIG bailouts, and auto bailouts, as well as the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve have printed to fund the subsidization of bad business.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/whos-afraid-rand-paul#
“the universal struggle against competition [by aspects of both the Left and the Right] promises to produce in the first instance something in many respects even worse, a state of affairs which can satisfy neither planners nor [classical] liberals: a sort of syndicalist or “corporative” organization of industry, in which competition is more or less suppressed but planning is left in the hands of the independent monopolies of the separate industries.”
p. 89 The Road to Serfdom. by F.A. Hayek
Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Banks, Big… sounds like corporatism is exactly what we have.
rafflaw
1, October 22, 2013 at 10:51 am
That is one scary place to live. If China does not begin to tackle the problem, the corporations that it is serving won’t have any workers alive to make their cheap products.
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raff
if you think that’s bad just google “china cancer villages”
The people living there are in danger of serious major illnesses, some of which are permanent. People should be moved out of the city until the pollution is cleared out. It is amazing to me how much pollution people will tolerate before they act to avoid it.
But they have been given Most favored nation status in our free trade agreements. I do think that means they can do anything they want with the world’s air. Also does it really matter when the Apple factory has to put up suicide nets around their employee dorms so they don’t get any ideas? Be happy on the giant global plantation. Coming to our shores soon.
DavidM:
I knew one of those economic advisers, he was a progressive.
Also didnt the former party bosses make out pretty well? I would imagine you would have chaos going from a controlled economy to a market economy overnight.
Corina, The more the merrier.
But BarkinDog, the pollution thing is chickens coming home to roost. They are in denial and yet some of them see this as achieving what the single child to a family seeks which is a smaller population. The cancer and respiratory illness will kill off a lot of them.
China and Russia both have rampant capitalists. One has to have privilege or be approved by the commie govt. It is “convergence” — the communist totalitarian countries get more capitalist over time and we get more fascist like them. Never the Twain shall meet except in the sewer.
Conspiracy Theory time: this is another form of population control; Chinese government/Elites have found another method of preventing or slowing the population explosion in China.
In a global climate system what goes around comes around.
I know I know, in some places the Earth is Flat, so, pollution does not go anywhere else but Flatsville.
That is one scary place to live. If China does not begin to tackle the problem, the corporations that it is serving won’t have any workers alive to make their cheap products.
“Beijing and Moscow are two cities that have affected my ability to breathe and have caused pain in my eyes as well as my lungs. At least in Moscow, they provide gas masks in your hotel room, right next to the hair dryer. LOL. As comical as it is, it is true.”
DavidM,
Funny as it might seem, but nevertheless true, Russia and China exhibit the end games of “Free Market Capitalism”. In both countries the market is king
and the large corporations run unchecked as long as they pay homage to the autocratic governments. Such is the end game of all Randian vision. The cooperation between rapacious corporations and the State. It is inevitable from the mindset you preach, but the log in your eye is too big to let you see it.
Mike Spindell wrote: “Funny as it might seem, but nevertheless true, Russia and China exhibit the end games of “Free Market Capitalism”
What planet do you live on? China is communist, and Russia was communist until Boris Yeltsin banned the communist party 1991 for driving their country into bankruptcy. The new communist party in Russia (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) is their second largest political party. These countries do not represent examples of Free Market Capitalism. They are examples of the OPPOSITE of Free Market Capitalism. The best you can say is that they are moving toward Free Market Capitalism because it is more successful than socialism and communism. What are the sources of your misinformation? Is it your imagination, or do you actually read it somewhere?
David M,
Your memory fails you, or the log in your eye prevents you from seeing that you don’t know whereof you speak:
“Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev’s most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 12 June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR), at that time one of the 15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union. He won 57% of the vote in a six-candidate contest and became the third democratically elected leader of Russia in history. Upon the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and the final dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, Yeltsin remained in office as the President of the Russian Federation, the USSR’s successor state. Yeltsin was reelected in the 1996 election; in the second round of the election Yeltsin defeated Gennady Zyuganov from the revived Communist Party by a margin of 13%. However, Yeltsin never recovered his early popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s.
He vowed to transform Russia’s socialist command economy into a free market economy and implemented economic shock therapy, price liberalization and privatization programs. Due to the method of privatization, a good deal of the national wealth fell into the hands of a small group of oligarchs.[2] Much of the Yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption, inflation, economic collapse and enormous political and social problems that affected Russia and the other former states of the USSR. Within the first few years of his presidency, many of Yeltsin’s political supporters turned against him and Vice President Alexander Rutskoy denounced the reforms as “economic genocide”.[3]
Ongoing confrontations with the Supreme Soviet climaxed in the October 1993 Russian constitutional crisis in which Yeltsin illegally ordered the dissolution of the parliament, which then attempted to remove Yeltsin from office. The military eventually sided with Yeltsin and besieged and shelled the Russian White House, resulting in the deaths of 187 people. Yeltsin then scrapped the existing constitution, temporarily banned political opposition and deepened his economic experimentation. He then introduced a new constitution with stronger presidential power and it was approved by referendum on 12 December 1993 with 58.5% of voters in favour.
On 31 December 1999, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of his chosen successor, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin left office widely unpopular with the Russian population.[4] By some estimates, his approval ratings when leaving office were as low as 2%.”
Yeltsin was supported by the G.H.W. Bush administration which sent advisers
to him to instruct him on how to set up a “Free Enterprise” system.
As for China, perhaps you might take your cohort Hskiprob’s advice and read Marx. Please point out to me where large, private corporations are part of the Communist Plan. Just because people call themselves “communists” doesn’t mean they are. The analogy is that just because people call themselves supporters of our Constitution, doesn’t mean that they understand, or support it.
Mike Spindell wrote: “Your memory fails you…”
I think my memory is fine. Like I said, “The best you can say is that they are moving toward Free Market Capitalism because it is more successful than socialism and communism.” Your post of details supports what I said rather than detracts from it. I don’t see any contradictions.
Beijing and Moscow are two cities that have affected my ability to breathe and have caused pain in my eyes as well as my lungs. At least in Moscow, they provide gas masks in your hotel room, right next to the hair dryer. LOL. As comical as it is, it is true.
One of the factors cited was furnaces daring to come on for the first time for the cold season. Going to be a long winter in China. At what reading over 1,000 do people just start keeling over?
Reblogged this on Brittius.com.
The 300 number was a good day. The Wall Street Journal reported last week readings of 1000.
Maybe they’ll agree to cap n’ trade.
Interesting…. Now if we could just get the oil companies and other. Mfg in the US to contain and not pollute the soil, water and air we’d being doing ok…. But you can buy off government intrusion if you have good or the best connected lobbiest…..
Lol! I think Al Gore needs to spend some time over there and “get their minds right.”