Fifty years of industrialization and economic development have had severe consequences on China's environment. China's rush into industrialisation after 1950 was undertaken with hardly any regard for the atmosphere, water supplies, forests or the countryside in general. Belching smokestacks were seen as proof of the success of socialist construction. Severe environmental pollution, including acid rain, thick smog, toxic waste, water pollution, and rapidly growing emissions of carbon dioxide, has been the result. 

I have heard the nashing of teeth over the coming Chinese dominance since the eighties. I have tried to tell people to have confidence in capitalism and don’t give in to the negative thinking that is so often the hallmark of our press corps and the legions of soothsayers and pundits.

The fact is the communist system is restrictive and does not allow dissent. So when you have a major abuse of government power or the abuse by a corporation of  trust of the masses then you don’t get any relief under that system.  Nothing happens except the dissenters go to jail and the people get abused. And so it goes in China today.

The advantage of Capitalism is that it does not concentrate all of the power into the hands of government so really the free market rules. It may take longer then we would like but when people find out about pollution  they start raising hell.  

I know we have had some famous exceptions to this case and once again if you sound off and some how you come up missing and are never seen again, like Karen Silkwood, then you get killed all right but that is not the end of that story and now they make a move and a book about you all of which serves to bring down the corporate giant a civil action is filed and the whole thing unravels. A superfund site is developed from the fines. The bottom line is no matter how far someone wants to take a cover up it eventually effects the publicly held companies bottom line and the bull shit comes to an end.

Win honor for our great leader Chairman Mao, bring credit to our great socialist motherland, 1970

In a closed system like China this is not possible. The government can not be questioned and the industry that is owned by the government. Has polluted the environment in ways that extend far beyond the local community. The same things happened here in Lake Ponchatrain and in the Mississippi river as well. It was dealt with by citizens groups that put pressure on the local government and industry. Laws were changed people that were in certain industries suffered, but it was dealt with decades ago and now is much better. Not so in China and they have taken it to the level where this river may be ruined forever and there are many such environmental tragedies waiting to be revealed.

Here is the dirty truth and you have to wonder how come the environmentalists are not down the Chinese government’s throat.  Oh I remember why now it’s because they don’t really care and they are closet commies themselves. How could I have forgotten?

 Here is the sad sad story.

Read more: Bloated Commie government can't clean up it's act.

Drudge has this flashback on his site. It just shows you how very wastful this chowderhead is. His carbon footprint is as big as half the city I live in.  

"The most vulnerable part of the Earth's environment is the very thin layer
of air clinging near to the surface of the planet, that we are now so
carelessly filling with gaseous wastes that we are actually altering the
relationship between the Earth and the Sun - by trapping more solar
radiation under this growing blanket of pollution that envelops the entire
world," Vice President Gore told the U.N. Global Warming conference of 159
nations this morning in Koyto, Japan.

In what was one the most dramatic speeches in recent memory, Gore announced
to world leaders: "Whether we recognize it or not, we are now engaged in an
epic battle to right the balance of our Earth, and the tide of this battle
will turn on when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently
aroused by shared sense of urgent danger to join an all-out effort."

Applause filed the halls of the Kyoto International Conference Center. "We
must achieve a safe overall concentration level for greenhouse gases in the
Earth's atmosphere."

carbondioxidemethanenitrousoxidehydrofluorocarbonsperfluorocarbonssulfurhexa
chloride.

The message is serious. So serious in fact, the DRUDGE REPORT has
calculated that Vice President Al Gore is burning more than 439,500 pounds
of fuel, or 65,600 gallons, at a cost of more than $131,000 on his 16,000
mile daytrip, just to deliver the warning.

Now that's commitment.

Air Force II's Global Warming Express features an itinerary that takes the
vice president from Washington to Florida to Washington to Alaska to Japan
and back -- all in just 72-hours.

"The extra heat which cannot escape is beginning to change the global
patterns of climate to which we are accustomed. Our fundamental challenge
now is to find out whether and how we can change the behaviors that are
causing the problem."

Gore's plane, a Boeing 707 gas guzzler burns on average 4.1 gallons a mile.
The complete Washington to Florida to Washington to Alaska to Japan and
return to Washington trip calculated from commercial air mileage tables is
just over 16,000 miles total. Gas gallons needed for AIR FORCE II to go
16,000 miles: 65,600. Applying the average price of $2.01 per gallon of
Jet A to the 16,000 mile r/t -- the fuel cost alone passes $131,000.00.
There are 6.7 pounds per gallon of jet fuel. Total pounds of fuel burned on
Gore's Global Warming Express -- 439,500.

Unprecedented Leadership.

WASHINGTON -- Despite talk of an energy crisis and the need for independence from foreign oil, Congress seems to be in no mood to open more of the country's coastal waters to energy development.

The House late Thursday rejected an attempt to end the quarter-century ban on oil and natural gas drilling that has been in effect for 85 percent of the country's coastal waters from Alaska to New England despite arguments that new supplies are needed to lower energy costs.

Lawmakers from Florida and California, who led the fight to continue the drilling moratorium, said they feared energy projects as close as three miles from shore could jeopardize multibillion-dollar tourism industries in their states.

"People don't go to visit the coasts of Florida or the coast of California to watch oil wells," Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., said. The issue, which dominated debate on a $25.9 billion Interior Department spending bill, saw the sides split largely along geographic, not partisan lines. Republicans and Democrats from coastal states opposed lifting the drilling restrictions.

The fight to open the waters off both coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico to energy companies - at least for natural gas - was led by Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa.

He called natural gas "the mother's milk" of an array of industries from chemical and fertilizer companies to the makers of bricks, and said if there isn't more gas found domestically, prices will remain high and industries will be forced overseas where the fuel is cheaper.

"This is about the economy of America," said Peterson, pleading with fellow lawmakers to end the offshore drilling moratorium that Congress first imposed in 1981 and which it has been extended every year since. It covers virtually all outer continental shelf waters outside of the western Gulf of Mexico where U.S. offshore oil and gas wells are concentrated. "Natural gas beyond three miles belongs to all Americans and we are entitled to use it," argued Rep. Charles Regula, R-Ohio, whose district, like Peterson's, lies far from the ocean waters that were at the heart of the House debate.

Most lawmakers made clear they felt otherwise.

First, the House rejected by a lopsided 279-141 vote an attempt by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, to lift the long-standing moratorium as it applies to oil drilling.

Then the House voted 217-203 to put back into the Interior bill the language - stricken last week by a committee at Peterson's request - that also continues the ban on natural gas drilling in those same waters.

The overall bill was approved 293-128 and sent to the Senate.

"Drilling for natural gas means drilling for oil," argued Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., citing industry pronouncements that where there is gas, often oil is found and probably would be developed. "Drilling three miles off our coast will not lower gas prices today or anytime in the near future."

Peterson sought to ease the coastal-state lawmakers' concerns.

Lifting the moratorium wouldn't mean drilling right away, he said. The presidential moratorium would not be affected by the congressional action, he said. And President Bush has said he has no intention of tinkering with the moratorium, which also had been the policy of his two predecessors.

But Capps said if Congress lifts its ban, there would be growing pressure on the White House to do the same.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., was more blunt. "Our coasts are simply too valuable to risk this. I can't depend on the president. The president is an oil man."

Separately, by a 252-165 vote, the House, directed the Interior Department to renegotiate contracts on oil leases that allowed companies to avoid federal royalty payments even when oil prices soared. To get companies to renegotiate the contracts - which date back to the 1990s but involve leases still producing - it barred companies from receiving new leases unless they renegotiate the earlier ones.

In other action on the Interior bill, the House:

- Approved a restriction on road-building in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

- Barred the Interior Department from selling wild horses for slaughter as part of its wild horse and burro adoption program.

- Told the Environmental Protection Agency not to implement a 2003 directive that environmentalists contend reduces wetlands protection.

Separately, an attempt to debate climate change - and for the first time bring up for a vote the idea of mandatory caps on greenhouse gases - was blocked. A "sense of Congress" resolution on the subject was ruled out of order.

The climate provision offered by Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., would have put lawmakers on record as agreeing that human actions were contributing to global warming and that carbon emissions into the atmosphere should be limited.

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The bill is H.R. 5386