In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River, a feeder to Lake
Erie and Cleveland, Ohio’s main waterway, burst into flames. The August 1969
issue of Time magazine featured an article on the fire, and it wasn’t kind:
“Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes
rather than flows.” Cleveland, my hometown, a great American city with world
class museums, music and major league sports, would soon be known as “the
mistake on the lake.”
America’s environmental awareness did not have its
beginnings with the Cuyahoga blaze, but the image of the river’s spontaneous
combustion became etched in the nation’s consciousness as a symbol of the
environmental decay wrought by industrial progress. The Cuyahoga fire is often
described in history books as a wake-up call to the nation. By the early 1970s,
a strong environmental consciousness took hold.
China today — as it begins to come to terms with air,
water and land befouled by three decades of industrialization — bears some resemblance to the United States of
the late 1960s. The Chinese are beginning to wonder, just as Americans did back
then, whether “industrial progress”
has come at too high a cost to the environment. Attitudes in China are
changing.
When the PEW Research Center asked Chinese people in a
2008 survey to rate the seriousness of air pollution on a scale ranging from
“not a problem at all” to a “very big problem,” 31 percent rated it a “very big
problem.” In 2013, in a repeat of the PEW survey, 47 percent called it a “very
big problem.” While these numbers tell us only so much, the trend is clear: environmental anxiety is spreading.
This growing anxiety is reflected in the rising frequency
of environmental protests. In the past year, people have taken to the streets
in cities throughout the country to protest the building of coal-fired power plants, chemical plants,
oil refineries, waste incinerators, and the like. According to Chen Jiping,
a former leading member of the Communist Party’s political and legislative
affairs committee, pollution is now the leading cause of social unrest in
China.
Why this budding environmental consciousness now? The
answer is simple: 2013 was, by any accounting, one horrific year for the
environment.
The year started with the “airpocalypse.” In January 2013, Beijing was enveloped by a thick,
soupy concoction so dirty, so
polluted, that day in China’s capital turned to night. The quality of the air
over Beijing was worse than a typical airport smoking lounge. The World Health
Organization said it was 40 times higher than the level deemed safe to breathe.
Since then, incidents of equally deadly air pollution have struck Shanghai,
Tianjin, Hangzhou and other cities.
In March, pig carcasses came bobbing up and down the Huangpu
River, a major source of Shanghai’s drinking water. For two weeks, not just a
few dead pigs or even a few hundred, but 16,000 pig carcasses floated past
Shanghai. Farmers upstream were apparently disposing of dead and virus-stricken hogs by dumping them in
local rivers.
In 2013 the Beijing government acknowledged what
environmentalists had long suspected: some villages in the countryside had
become so-called cancer villages, communities where cancer cases “cluster” and far exceed the norm. These
villages are usually just downstream from an industrial plant that discharges
hazardous waste into rivers that villagers use to drink and to irrigate their
crops. Chinese nongovernmental organizations and environmental experts put the
current number of cancer villages at more than 450.
In May of 2013, officials in Guangzhou, one of China’s
largest and most prosperous cities, informed the public that 44 percent of rice
samples sold throughout the city contained dangerous levels of the metal
cadmium. Cadmium in rice comes from
the contaminated soil in which it is grown and is known to harm the liver,
kidneys, lungs, and the respiratory tract — and lead to cancer.
The bad news didn’t end there. People living in northern
China were informed by a team of American, Chinese and Israeli researchers that
they should expect to live much shorter lives — a full 5.5 years shorter — than
their countrymen to the south. The reason: Heavier
coal dependency in the north makes the air they breathe that much more
toxic than the air in the south. Around the same time, several partner
universities and institutions, including the World Health Organization, issued
a report finding that 1.2 million Chinese died prematurely in 2010 alone owing to the country’s polluted air.
China’s environment is a disaster. But by casting a
bright light on the country’s severe pollution problems, the crises of the past
year have stirred a greater environmental consciousness in the people. At the
same time, they have spurred the country’s leaders to take more aggressive
environmental action.
In March of this year, top officials in Beijing declared
a “war on pollution.” A month later they reformed the country’s Environmental
Protection Law for the first time since 1989, strengthening the system for
fining polluters, permitting some nongovernmental organizations to bring
public-interest lawsuits against those who violate the law, and holding local
officials accountable for the environmental quality of their regions.
The leadership has banned the building of new coal-fired
power plants in key economic areas and all coal use in Beijing by 2020. Trial carbon-trading programs have been
introduced in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Caps have been placed
on coal consumption in some highly polluted regions. The government has
committed $277 billion to an air pollution “action plan” and $333 billion to a
water pollution “action plan.” China now invests more than any other country in
renewable energy.
Finally, the authorities have restricted the number of cars
on the road, set higher vehicle-emission standards and are offering huge
rebates on the purchase of electric and hybrid vehicles.
We can’t yet know how effective these measures will be.
But we shouldn’t be blind to the enormous effort China is making. Looking back
years from now, my guess is that we will regard 2013 as a tipping point —
China’s Cuyahoga moment. It was the year China as a nation became
environmentally engaged. That engagement isn’t good just for China; it’s good
for the entire world.
Daniel K. Gardner teaches Chinese history and environment
at Smith College. He is writing a book on environmental pollution in China.
What are some reasons China feels it must make an action
plan?
What pollutants does the article mention?
What body systems do the effect?
Define bold-faced words and concepts
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