China & the Environment

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Air Pollution China's pollution is accumulating. Although measures against pollution have had some effect, the seriousness of this problem has not alleviated. The general reason is that China's process of industrialization has not finished and infrastructure construction is rising. China is still the biggest construction site in the world. At the same time, it is a veritable global factory. Seventy percent of global iron and steel, and about half of the world's cement, is produced in China. Against this background, it is impossible for China to be as clean as the West. –Global Times Global reported by the monitoring site on the roof of the US Embassy in Beijing, air quality during the 2008 Olympics (as seen in the background picture) was in the low-300s "hazardous" The readings in the past few days have been in the previously unimaginable 700s-and-above range, reported as "beyond index" –The Atlantic The AtlanticThe Atlantic In PicturesIn PicturesIn PicturesIn Pictures

Government Sponsored Projects: Thr ee Gorges DamThr ee Gorges Dam: The Great Wall across the Yangtze NYT: Choking on GrowthNYT The Three Gorges Dam will consist of a 610-foot high wall running 1.3 miles from bank to bank. The reservoir created by the backflow of the dam will extend 360 miles up river to Chongqing ("Chong-ching"), a distance equal to nearly half the length of California. Once operational, the dam will produce the energy of 15 nuclear power plants. When the dam is completed, 13 cities, 140 towns and over 1,300 villages will be submerged by the Three Gorges Reservoir. Upon the dam's completion, 1,300 known archeological sites will be lost forever under water. South to North Water Transfer Project NYT: Interactive mapInteractive map Mao’s unrealized plans: the $62 billion South- to-North Water Transfer Project to funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would be completed in The eastern and central lines are already under construction The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water it can get. An economic powerhouse with more than 200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. But scientists say those below the North China Plain may be drained within 30 years.

Farewell to the Yangtze River Dolphin By Peter Ritter Friday, Aug. 10, 2007 And the Yangtze River Dolphin? Extinct We can say that the animal is functionally extinct," says August Pfluger, head of the Zurich-based Baiji.org Foundation, which in December co-sponsored a six-week, 2,000-mile (3,500- km) survey of the Yangtze without finding a single remaining member of the critically endangered species. The dolphin, one of only four exclusively freshwater species in the world, may have the unhappy distinction of being the first aquatic mammal to go extinct in more than half a century — and the first large mammal driven into oblivion by environmental degradation.

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