China's rapid development threatens to push an already severely damaged environment to the brink of ecological collapse. We'll discuss whether China can solve these problems, and what it would take.

Here's a Wikipedia article on the environment of China. An excerpt:

One of the serious negative consequences of the People's Republic of China's rapid industrial development has been increased pollution and degradation of natural resources. Much solid waste is not properly disposed of. Water pollution is a source of health problems across the country and air pollution causes up to 750,000 premature deaths each year. China's polluted environment is largely a result of the country's rapid development and consequently a large increase in primary energy consumption, which is primarily provided by coal power plants. China has pursued a development model which prioritizes exports-led growth (similar to many other East Asian countries).

This is from the Chinese government's official web site (http://www.china.org.cn/english/index.htm )


China Questions and Answers


Q: Developed countries have followed a path of "polluting, and then controlling and protecting." China is now doing the same thing. How great is the economic loss caused by environmental pollution in China? What measures will be taken to strengthen environmental protection and reduce pollution?

A: The question of how much economic loss is caused by environmental pollution is a hot issue that many experts, scholars and government officials are extremely concerned with. Since methods of calculation differ, estimates of economic loss caused by environmental pollution are different. According to an incomplete estimate, the annual economic loss caused by environmental pollution in China amounts to 2 to 8 percent of the GDP. There are also other losses caused by ecological destruction. As a result, the government has introduced the concept of Green GDP, mainly in the hope of finding a good way to combine economic development with environmental protection. In this way, China can reach the target of both protecting the environment and developing the economy.

The main cause of environmental pollution is the extensive economic development mode that China has long followed, as well as the fragility of the environment and other historic problems that remain. With regards to the current environmental situation, China is taking measures to further enhance protection of the environment in the following six aspects:

First, using the international experience for reference, actively facilitating the development of a cyclical economy, applying the idea of a cyclical economy to its policies, laws, plans and standards of environmental protection, striving to establish a scientific development system suitable for China's conditions, and promoting the building of a society that follows cycles;

Second, keeping close watch on the environment, exercising administration by law, eliminating the backward equipment that causes environmental pollution by optimizing the industrial structure, and promoting clean production to ensure that increased production does not mean increased pollution, while, actively implementing a system of licensing for discharging contaminants to gradually realize the target of both developing the economy and improving the environment;

Third, taking care of the environment in accordance with the ecological system, making concentrated efforts to deal with environmental problems in key regions such as the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and Taihu Lake, as well as their surrounding cities, strengthening control over the discharge of nitrogen and phosphor into seas and rivers, preventing the maritime environment from being polluted by land-sourced pollutants, and carrying out measures to protect key ecologically sensitive areas, resource development areas and nature reserves;

Fourth, establishing an operational mechanism for pollution treatment that is guided by the government, funded by multiple sources and operated under the market system, and gradually increasing the fee for urban sewage disposal, to ensure the construction and normal operation of pollution treatment facilities;

Fifth, encouraging the public to take part in the protection and supervision of the environment, improving the transparency of administration and information to provide conditions where the public can know about and supervise environmental protection work, and maintaining the public's environmental rights and interests; and

Sixth, relying on scientific and technological progress to protect the environment, further integrating various scientific and technological powers and bringing them into play, making concentrated efforts to study and solving difficult, hot-button issues related to the environment and development, and striving to solve more environmental problems with relatively less input.

The human beings only have one Earth. Environmental protection is a global issue and is also our utmost responsibility. We should not only improve our environmental conditions but also aim to realize a harmony between human and nature, as well as a balanced development of economy, society and environment.

From the University of California-
Berkeley, here's a 2006 scientific paper on China's greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.rff.org/rff/Events/loader.cfm?url=/commonspo...le.cfm&PageID=27892( The abstract:

Our results suggest that the anticipated path of China’s Carbon Dioxide
(CO2) emissions has dramatically increased over the last five years. The magnitude
of the projected increase in Chinese emissions out to 2015 is several times
larger than reductions embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. Our estimates are based
on a unique provincial level panel data set from the Chinese Environmental Protection
Agency. This dataset contains considerably more information relevant
to the path of likely Chinese greenhouse gas emissions than national level time
series models currently in use. Model selection criteria clearly reject the popular
static environmental Kuznets curve specification in favor of a class of dynamic
models with spatial dependence.

Here's a disturbing story from today's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/14/AR2007111402563.html?hpid=topnews) about problems created by China's new, massive Three Gorges Dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam). An excerpt:

In the 18 months since the Three Gorges Dam was completed, increasingly clear signs of environmental degradation have started to accumulate along the Yangtze, just as activists had warned. Among the most troubling have been incidents of geological instability in the soaring gorges that now embrace a reservoir stretching behind the dam across a good portion of Hubei province 600 miles southwest of Beijing.

Local officials acknowledge that dozens of major landslides have been recorded, affecting more than 20 miles of riverbank...

From Forbes http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/11/16/ap4347821.html here's what may be an important breakthrough in controlling China's air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. I'd like to see the U.S. concentrate on helping China to move toward alternative energy sources, for their sake and our own.

Associated Press
US, China Working on Biofuels Pact
By JOE McDONALD 11.16.07, 7:28 AM ET

BEIJING - The United States and China are working on a pact to promote use of ethanol and other biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and could announce an agreement as early as next month, an American official said Friday.

The agreement would call for cooperation in research, producing crops for fuel and other areas, said Alexander Karsner, an assistant U.S. energy secretary. He was in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on promoting use of renewable energy sources.

The United States and China are the world's biggest oil consumers and producers of carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists say trap the sun's heat and are raising global temperatures.

Karsner said he and Chinese officials talked about a meeting next month in Indonesia of environment officials from 80 countries to discuss a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on emissions reductions. He said he did not bring up Washington's insistence that Beijing, a major emissions source, accept binding limits. China has rejected emissions caps but says it will try to curb gas production.

A biofuels agreement could be announced at the Dec. 12 meeting of the Strategic Economic Dialogue, a high-level U.S.-Chinese forum on trade and other issues, Karsner said. He declined to give details, saying they still are being discussed.

It would be Washington's first such pact in Asia, following similar agreements with Brazil and Sweden, Karsner told reporters.

"China is a natural, as would be India, to enhance cooperation on biofuels," he said.

China has promoted wind power and other alternative energy in hopes of reducing environmental damage from heavy use of coal and oil to fuel its booming economy. The communist government also wants to curb reliance on imported energy, which it sees as a strategic weakness.

China already is the third-largest producer of biofuels after the United States and Brazil, which account for 80 percent of global production, according to Karsner.

Here also is the report from the Chinese news agency Xinhua http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/16/content_7090748.htm

U.S. energy official: Sino-U.S. biofuel agreement in the works


www.chinaview.cn 2007-11-16 21:00:06 Print

BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- China and the United States are drafting a biofuel agreement that will likely be signed in December, a visiting U.S. senior energy official said here on Friday. It will focus on sharing knowledge and technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We have not concluded a biofuel agreement yet ... we have a biofuel agreement draft circulating between the United States and China and we expect progress in the coming weeks," said Alexander Karsner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

"We have concluded an agreement for exchanging expertise, technical assistance and technology development on energy efficiency. That agreement is mature and we are now moving to implementation," he said.

"Through our agreement with China, we hope to transfer this knowledge and expertise," said Karsner, who met with officials from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on "energy environmental matters".

"We had a very productive, lengthy and engaging dialogue on a wide range of issues, things of mutual concern like energy markets, global climate change, price of oil and studies of science and technology between the two countries," said Karsner of his meeting with Zhang Guobao, the NDRC deputy head.

"The efficiency of the cooperation even prior to the implementation of the protocols, has yielded very good results already."

Karsner added how to elevate the role of clean energy technology and accelerate the outcomes and impacts of clean energy technology in the two countries topped the discussion.

The United States and Brazil, the world's leading ethanol producers accounting for 70 percent of global production, signed a memorandum of understanding in March agreeing to forge a strategic alliance to promote the production and consumption of biofuels worldwide.

China, the world's third largest ethanol producer, would be the first Asian country to ink the biofuel agreement with the United States.

Karsner said the U.S. government had a goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent over 10 years.

"In other words, we have a mandated fuel standard of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels to be used by 2017."

To cut carbon discharge, China has set targets to boost the proportion of renewable energy to 16 percent of all energy consumption by 2020 from the current seven percent level.

"I do not want to prejudge (the biofuel agreement), but I am confident about that," Karsner said.

Here's an article from Xinhua in which the Chinese premier talks green. I guess the question is whether this will translate into aggressive action, since from what I have read, regional and local officials are considerably less committed to protecting China's environment.



China to take firm actions on environmental protection, says Wen


www.chinaview.cn 2007-11-29 19:30:16 Print

BEIJING, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Thursday that China would take firm actions to protect environment, increase the efficiency of energy resources, develop the renewable resources and reduce greenhouse gas emission.

China would like to work with the other nations of the world to deal with the global environmental issue," he said during a meeting with the foreign participants of the annual meeting of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED).

Wen said the theme of the meeting, innovation and environment-friendly society, was coincided with China's development strategy.

The Chinese government would give prominence to building a resource-conserving, environment-friendly society in its strategy of industrialization and modernization, he said.

Wen said China had done a lot to fulfill this task and achieved good results.

China's energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) dropped 2.78 percent in the first half of this year, and the emissions of both sulfur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand dropped, he added.

He hoped the CCICED would play its role in promoting China's sustainable development.

From Wired News, here's a story on the Bali climate change conference, which notes that China, along with India and the U.S., are the world's three biggest polluters, and none of them are doing anything meaningful to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Another startling fact from the article: Environmental damage costs China $200 billion annually, about 10 percent of its GDP.

Nobel Laureate Al Gore is calling for China to do more to combat global warming. Here's an excerpt from the coverage in The Australian:

OSLO: Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, declaring that the world's biggest polluters, the US and China, would "stand accountable before history" if they failed to act to combat climate change.

"It is time to make peace with the planet," Mr Gore said in the Norwegian capital. "We must mobilise our civilisation with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilised for war.

"It should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters (the US and China) and most of all my own country that will need to make the boldest moves. Both countries should stop using the other's behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival." The remarks came as governments met in Bali to work on a new international treaty on carbon emissions to replace Kyoto by 2012.

From China Daily, here's an op-ed by a Chinese official on the results of the Bali climate change conference. Notice that the piece is extremely critical of the U.S. for dragging its feet on climate change, while lauding the Chinese government's stance (even though both countries are widely perceived as being laggards). Notice also that
he refers to China, which has one of the world's largest economies, as a poor country.

It takes a world to fight climate change
By Lau Nai-keung (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-19 07:23


Monitoring the progress of the United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, was a bit like watching a battle unfolding in front of me.

No, this was not a war between rich countries - particularly the United States, which has been polluting our sky for the past 300 years and continues to do so on a large and escalating scale - and poor countries - with China as a glaring example, though it has entered the polluting game late and committed much lesser crimes per capita, but is seen to be making its best effort to clear up the mess. This is all about mankind confronting a common problem, one that might put us out of existence. It is our common war.

Report upon report from different groups of independent scientists have clearly warned us that we are heading toward a global catastrophe and are about to pass the point of no return. The most recent scientific data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows that action to reduce emissions must be taken now. Something urgent and drastic has to be done about the situation if we are to have any hope of heading off our common extinction. We have the means to slow down climatic change, and even ultimately reverse the situation and get back to a healthier ecology, but it seems we just do not have the collective wisdom to do so.

The adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 was a major step forward in tackling the problem of global warming. After three conferences, members of UNFCCC signed the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997, which came into force starting in February 2005. The protocol requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The Bush administration, together with a few other developed countries, refused to ratify the protocol, initially on the pretext that there was no concrete evidence of global warming. Then they claimed there was no clear connection between increases in GHG emissions and climate change and ultimately they fell back on rejecting specific targets for emissions cuts.

Just before the Bali conference opened, newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the protocol, marking a clear departure from the untenable US position.

The purpose of the Bali conference was to achieve a breakthrough in the form of a global roadmap to fight climate change in the period after 2012, the year the first commitment period covered by the Kyoto Protocol expires. The main goal was threefold: to launch negotiations on a climate change deal for the post-2012 period, to set the agenda for these negotiations and to reach agreement on when these negotiations should conclude. The European Union and developing nations had pushed for the agenda to state that industrialized nations should reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 25 to 40 percent by 2020, but the US joined several other countries in rejecting targets.

China's position has been clear and consistent, as spelled out by President Hu Jintao at the APEC forum in Sydney in September. The country supports the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol. Developed countries should face up to their historical responsibility and their currently high emissions, strictly abide by the emissions reduction targets set forth in the Kyoto Protocol, honor their commitment to making technology transfers and providing financial support to developing countries and continue to take the lead in reducing emissions after 2012. Developing countries should, in light of conditions on the ground at home, take due measures, including introducing and applying advanced clean technologies, improving their capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change and contributing their share to tackling climate change.

Again, the US has dragged its feet on the issue. The US argues that talks should first focus on ways to reduce GHG emissions, and then discuss specific targets. In the end, negotiators had to agree to US demands in order to salvage any hope of reaching an agreement over the next two years.

With or without the US in the game, the Kyoto Protocol carries on. In order to give the signatory countries a certain degree of flexibility in meeting their emissions reduction targets, the protocol has developed three innovative mechanisms - known as Emissions Trading, the Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). These market-based mechanisms allow developed countries to earn and trade emissions credits through projects implemented in other countries, which they can then use to meet their own commitments. Still, the EU came under fire from environmental activists in Bali for not offering poor countries explicit funding to help fight climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

As the Bali conference wrapped up, rich countries committed to distributing more funds and technology to poor countries.

As a party to the Kyoto Protocol, China has done its part and is also a beneficiary of these arrangements. Nearly 40 percent of global carbon trading involves China, and in 2005 more than 90 percent of wind energy projects were financed through the CDM. The capacity of wind turbines in China doubled last year, and is expected to double again this year.

According to an authoritative report, with sufficient incentives, China has the capacity to generate 1.2 gW of wind power, about three times as much energy generated by the Three Gorges Dam. China is now among the top three manufacturers of photo-voltaic cells in the world. The market is still relatively small, but 60 percent of the world's solar-powered water heaters are in China. By 2020 the country will generate 1.18 gW of electricity with wind turbines, and 2.5 gW with photo-voltaic cells. The two together will make up about 9 percent of the power generated in China in 2020.

The authorities have promised the country will generate 15 percent of its energy using renewable sources by 2020. They also committed to improving the country's energy efficiency by 20 percent and to close up to 1,000 of its least efficient coal plants in the 2006-10 period. These targets are difficult to meet. In 2006, for example, China managed to improve its energy efficiency by only 1.6 percent rather than the 4 percent it had promised. The country will have to work harder, and more international support is badly needed. China just cannot fight this global war against climatic change alone.

From ABC News, here's a story on the continuing problems with China's Three Gorges dam.

The $22 billion dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project, was supposed to end flooding along the Yangtze and provide a clean energy alternative to coal. Approved in 1992 and due to be completed in 2009, it will generate 84.7 billion kilowatts of electricity each year the equivalent of what it takes to light the counties of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, according to figures from 2005.

Yet along the way, more than 1.4 million people had to be moved. Though critics and experts warned the environment and people would pay too high a price, their criticisms were ignored and suppressed by a government in thrall to large engineering projects.
Even a few officials are breaking ranks to predict catastrophe. Toxic algae is blooming, feeding off industrial waste and sewage and tainting water supplies.

Experts have warned that the waters in the enormous reservoir are undermining hillsides. Water seeps into loosely packed soil and rocks, making them heavier and wetter, and can trigger landslides on steep slopes like those rising from the Yangtze.

Additionally, the huge weight of the water on the rock bed exerts a pressure that can lead to earthquakes.



I think that China's authoritarian system of government inevitably causes environmental disasters of this sort, because huge projects like the dam are conceived, approved and built without any sort of regulatory process or fear of voters' ire to serve as a check-and-balance.

This is worth checking out: an annnotated list of web resources dealing with China's environmental issues. It appears to be circa 2003, but there's still some pretty good stuff in there, such as a multi-part series from Asia Timeson China's escalating water crisis.

When it comes to changing consumer behavior for environmental benefit, being an authoritarian country makes things a lot easier. For example, the Chinese government just announced a ban on plastic bags.

Olympic athletes from the U.S. and elsewhere apparently are worried about the Chinese capital's polluted air, according to this Washington Post article:

Olympic Teams Prepare for the Dirty Air in Beijing

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 24, 2008; A01



BEIJING -- American runners are trying out face masks. Dutch cyclists will train in South Korea.

Fearful of the effects of air pollution on their performance, Olympic athletes are taking extreme measures to prepare for this summer's Games in Beijing.

Delegations from dozens of nations are setting up training bases in nearby countries and planning to fly into China at the last minute to minimize exposure to what they say is a hostile environment.

Teams from at least 20 countries, including Britain, Sweden, Germany and Brazil, are preparing training camps in Japan. Another 15 teams, including those from the Netherlands and Switzerland, will be based in South Korea. U.S. track and field competitors will be in Dalian, a Chinese coastal city.

In past Olympics, athletes typically arrived in host cities at least 10 days before the start of events to get used to the conditions. This year, some of the 10,000 expected competitors say they will come to Beijing just 72 hours before their first event -- raising the prospect of a fireworks-filled opening ceremony on Aug. 8 without many of the athletes.

The International Olympic Committee is aware that some countries have decided to put their final training bases outside Beijing. That is "not for us to make a judgment or comment," said Giselle Davies, an IOC spokeswoman. She said she was confident that this would not spoil the collegial spirit of the event.

"We have no doubt that once the Games kick off that the atmosphere will be there of all the athletes being together and bringing what's magical about the Games," Davies said.

Situated in a basin where smoke from factories and construction and dust from desert storms gather and shroud the city for days, Beijing has struggled to control air pollution for several years. To prepare for the Olympics, the city has spent $16.4 billion, moving the heaviest polluters outside its borders, planting trees, rerouting traffic and inducing rain.

Over the past few months, the Chinese government has vacillated on whether it would close factories or ban cars during the Olympics. The heads of companies in the area have asked that no action be taken, warning of devastating economic consequences if it were, while some foreign Olympic teams have pushed China to close everything for three weeks before the Games. The Beijing News reported this week that China could reduce traffic by half during the Games.

Recent measurements show that on some days the amount of smoke and dust particles in the air exceeds by three to 12 times the maximum deemed safe by the World Health Organization. So while some teams say they are encouraged by the progress, they are preparing for the worst. Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee, has said events could be rescheduled if the air quality does not meet safety standards on a given day.

"The magnitude of the pollution in Beijing is not something we know how to deal with. It's a foreign environment. It's like feeding an athlete poison," said David Martin, a respiratory expert who is helping train U.S. marathoners.

Frank Filiberto, a physician for the U.S. boxing team, thought concerns about Beijing's pollution were exaggerated -- until he came to visit.

In November, he accompanied 11 boxers to the Chinese capital for a competition. On their first morning there, Filiberto said, the men returned from their daily 20-minute training run complaining of burning eyes, coughing, congestion and breathing difficulties. Only six of the 11 boxers ended up feeling well enough to compete.

"In my opinion boxers are probably the finest athletes in the world," Filiberto said. "But they didn't think they could make it three rounds in Beijing." Filiberto and the coaches were so alarmed that they ordered the boxers to jog only in hotel hallways thereafter.

Randall L. Wilber, the U.S. Olympic Committee's senior sports physiologist, has come to Beijing a half-dozen times since March 2006 to study the effects of pollution on athletic performance. He concluded that it could be "huge."

Because athletes' lungs work more efficiently than most people's, he said at a presentation in October, "one of these high-powered athletes going out and exercising not even at their maximum, but going out and exercising for 30 minutes, they get a larger effective dose than you or I sitting in a chair in the park in Beijing for eight hours a day."

Athletes, coaches and medical directors for the teams say the potential effects of Beijing's pollution became apparent to them only during the numerous test events, or "dress rehearsals," that China hosted last year.

While some athletes said they were unfazed by the air, others found that it had a profound effect on their performance.

Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, a Boulder, Colo., bicyclist who competed in the 2004 Olympics in Athens and is a contender for a spot on this year's U.S. mountain biking team, said that when he arrived in the Chinese capital, the sky was a crystal-clear blue and he thought that concerns about pollution had been overblown. But on the day he was to race, he said, the smog was so thick "you could barely see a few city blocks" from his hotel window.

About 20 minutes into the race, Horgan-Kobelski started having trouble breathing.

"I struggled with it for a while," he said in a phone interview. "You're breathing as hard as you can but you feel like your muscles don't want to work. You're filling your lungs but you don't know what's going in there."

About halfway through the roughly 30-mile race, Horgan-Kobelski said, "my body sort of shut down." He pulled over and vomited.

It wasn't until he got to the athletes' lounge that he learned that he wasn't unique. Only eight of 47 contestants in the men's race finished; the others, including the Chinese riders, also suffered from breathing problems and dropped out.

Now medical teams around the world are trying to figure out what could give their countries' athletes an edge in a polluted atmosphere.

Martin, a professor emeritus of respiratory therapy at Georgia State University's School of Health and Human Sciences and author of "The Olympic Marathon," said the U.S. track and field team has been testing various types of face masks. Wearing the masks would slow down runners, he said, but "if they run without masks and the pollution coats the inside of their lungs, they will have the situation of a coal miner."

British athletes, most of whom will be based in the southern city of Macau before the Olympics, have been given information about "specific diets and antioxidants to battle pollution in Beijing," said Miriam Wilkens, a spokeswoman for the British Olympic Association.

Charles van Commenee, technical director for the Dutch National Olympic Committee, said the Netherlands, which has decided to base most of its athletes in South Korea, said acclimating to the pollution rather than avoiding it might be the answer. Athletes have been told to arrive in Beijing at least five days before their events. "Human bodies can get used to it," he said.

A secondary concern for the Olympic teams is the safety of food in Beijing. Last year's recalls of pesticide-laden fish, carcinogenic candy and other Chinese food products have made some athletes uneasy.

To forestall any problems, the Olympic Village has installed a system to monitor the food and will test for contaminants. But some staff members said they are discouraging athletes from eating at outside restaurants.

Medical advisers have expressed particular concern about Chinese meat, which in the past has been found to contain banned drugs such as anabolic steroids. They fear that an athlete who consumed that meat could fail a drug test and be disqualified.

Cai Tongyi, an Olympic Food Safety Committee member and a professor of food sciences at China Agricultural University, said athletes should not worry. "We will control the problem from the area of animal feed to block its source," he said.

At the other extreme are countries that brush off concerns about China's air and food -- Ethiopia, for example. Ethiopia won seven track and field medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and its Olympic officials said they are not doing anything different to prepare for Beijing.

Dube Jillo, technical director for Ethiopia's Olympic committee, said he has been to Beijing several times for marathons. "I don't know why some other teams are worried," he said. "I think the air in Beijing is very good."

The star of Ethiopia's track team apparently doesn't agree. Haile Gebreselassie, who has won two gold medals in the 10,000 meters and holds the world record in the marathon, may not run in the Olympic marathon. In an interview with the Associated Press, the runner's manager, Jos Hermens, said: "What he says is: 'Great if I win, but if it means the end of my career, then I really don't feel like it.' "

Researchers Wu Meng in Shanghai, Stella Kim in Seoul and Akiko Yamamoto in Tokyo contributed to this report.

From AlterNet, here's a story on what it will take to make a serious dent in China's environmental problems.



China's Environmental Problem Is a Political One
By Christina Larson, Washington Monthly
Posted on January 22, 2008, Printed on January 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/72992/
In January 2007, a geologist named Yong Yang set out from his home in China's western Sichuan Province with five researchers, two sport utility vehicles, one set of clothes, and several trunks of equipment for measuring rainfall and water volume; a camping stove, a rice cooker, canned meat, and more than sixty bottles of Sichuan hot sauce; a digital camera, a deck of cards, and several CDs of Tibetan music; and as many canisters of fuel as his team could strap to the roofs of their SUVs.

No roads cross the part of China to which Yong was traveling, so he also brought topographical charts and satellite photos of the region. His final destination, deep in China's wild western frontier, was the unmarked place on the Tibetan plateau from which the Yangtze River springs.

For several weeks the two vehicles followed the Yangtze west, as the river turned from running water to ice. The thermometer became useless when the temperature dipped below the lowest reading on its scale. Occasionally they spotted an antelope, and once wolves devoured their fresh yak meat. As they climbed in elevation, tracing the course the Yangtze had cut through the Dangla Mountains many millennia ago, the air grew thinner and the wind fiercer.

When the ground rose too steeply into the surrounding peaks for the SUVs to maneuver along the riverbanks, they drove on the frozen river itself, though this approach was not without its perils. About a month into their trip, on the auspicious first day of the Lunar New Year, Yong heard a great crunching sound as his front and then back tires slid through the ice, trapping his vehicle midstream. Fortunately, the vehicle wasn't too far submerged, and the backseat passengers managed to clamber out and signal to the second SUV. With a rope tied to the rear bumper, they dragged the vehicle from the frozen river, with Yong still in the driver's seat, transmission in reverse.

Yong and his companions made it safely out of the river. But since then he's continued to travel, in many senses, on thin ice. A vital question had propelled his journey up the Yangtze: the Chinese government is embarking on the most colossal water diversion project ever attempted, and Yong had taken it upon himself to discover whether it would work.

Water is an unevenly distributed resource in China. Traditionally, the south has been lush while the north has been a land of dry tundra and frozen desert. In 1952, Mao Zedong conjured a solution to this inequity: "Southern water is plentiful, northern water scarce," he said. "Borrowing some water would be good."

Ever since, China's leaders have dreamed of diverting water from one of the country's great rivers to the other -- from the southern Yangtze River into the northern Yellow River. (To fathom the scale of this undertaking, imagine watering the American Southwest by diverting the Mississippi River into the Colorado.)

In recent years, this eccentric scheme has become increasingly appealing to Chinese authorities, as water shortages in northern cities have become more and more dire. In 2002, China's highest executive body, the State Council, converted Mao's grandiose notion into a plan known as the South-to-North Water Transfer Project. Construction on two sections of the project have already begun, but the most ambitious stage is scheduled to begin by 2010.

This phase will divert water from the Yangtze in southwestern China to the north, across mountains that rise to 15,000 feet above sea level. The entire project will cost at least an estimated $60.4 billion, and has aroused intense opposition because it is expected to displace hundreds of thousands of people and devastate fragile ecosystems.

Between January and March, Yong's team traveled more than 16,000 miles in the Yangtze River basin, threading every bend in the western reaches of the river. The previous summer they had driven roughly the same route, so they could compare water levels in different seasons. On both trips they collected data on rainfall, geology, receding glaciers, and other trends that affect the volume of water in the river. Yong had learned from firsthand experience that for about four months each year the upper Yangtze is a ribbon of ice; only an engineering miracle could transport the frozen water north.

After he spent the summer and fall compiling data and circulating it among several dozen peer-researchers for feedback, he found more reasons to be skeptical of the ability of the project to live up to the government's vision. The bounteous stream of Beijing's imagination became, in Yong's careful calculations, a trickle.

The fact that Yong is free to conduct such inquiries at all says much about the recent political evolution of China. Fifteen years ago, the government wouldn't have tolerated public questioning of large-scale infrastructure projects. But in recent years, criticism from independent scientists and environmental organizations has prompted the government to postpone two planned western dam projects.

In September, officials even acknowledged (after the fact) that unsound planning for the controversial Three Gorges Dam project had created a potential "environmental catastrophe." This isn't a sign that China's Communist Party is throwing the country's political system open to full democratic participation. But China's leaders know that a rapidly deteriorating environment could stall the country's economic miracle and ignite political unrest, and so they're experimenting with limited openness to help avert these hazards. It remains an open question, however, just how much scrutiny the government will tolerate, and how much impact Yong will be permitted to have. His midwinter expedition was only the first stage of his odyssey into uncharted terrain.

In my first visit to Beijing, last spring, I wheezed all the way from the airport to my hotel. The thick smog hid any hint of direct sunlight, and for a week I didn't see my shadow. When I returned in mid-October, the city appeared to be a changed place. I was surprised to see clear blue skies. Skyscrapers were visible from a distance, not shrouded in haze. There were other changes, too -- swept sidewalks, a sudden absence of bootleg DVD hawkers, more policemen on the streets.

A week later, the city looked, sounded, and smelled like her familiar self again. The street vendors were back, along with the curbside cobblers and the men waving Bourne Identity 3 DVDs. The skies were gray, the sun obscured, and cigarette butts and orange peels once again speckled the sidewalks.

The temporary makeover had coincided -- not accidentally -- with the Seventeenth Communist Party Congress, the meeting of party bigwigs that happens once every five years and attracts numerous domestic and international visitors.

During the congress, the central government, eager to punctuate its new talk of environmental protection with some proof of its commitment, had directed its might toward cleaning up a targeted area for a discrete period of time, reportedly putting regional factories and Beijing's public vehicles on a compulsory holiday. The results were eerily impressive. (Expect an encore for the 2008 Olympics.) But the greater significance of this fleeting transformation was that it exposed the limits of the party's power. The central government can clamp down abruptly and indomitably, but it can't do so everywhere, all the time.

As I wrote in these pages last summer ("The Great Leap Forward"), China's political leaders have in recent years embraced the environmental cause, not out of sentiment or idealism but as a matter of survival.

China's environment is becoming so degraded that it risks choking off the country's booming economy: the West balks at buying mercury-contaminated grain, while water shortages threaten Chinese paper mills and petrochemical plants. Also at risk is the country's political stability: peasant riots over land seizures and polluted rivers are becoming increasingly common ("Pollution Revolution").

But while the central government has issued stern directives aimed at reducing air and water pollution, it lacks the means to enforce them. That's because, in order to promote economic growth over the last three decades, Beijing has gradually relinquished certain types of authority to provincial governments. The result has been dramatic gains in the country's gross domestic product, with new factories multiplying across the countryside. However, provincial autonomy has also enabled local officials to ignore cumbersome central directives, including regulations on matters ranging from food safety to environmental standards.

Understanding their diminished ability to enforce green statutes locally, China's leaders have turned cautiously to civil society for assistance. Since 1994, Beijing has empowered nongovernmental groups to expose polluting factories. Today there are more than 3,000 citizen green groups in China. In 2003