11.24.07
All the horrifying China statistics you could ever want
Check out Elizabeth C. Economy’s “The Great Leap Backward?” from the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs. It contains an astonishing collection of data and facts about China’s rapidly deteriorating environmental situation. A few samples:
In 2000, China anticipated doubling its coal consumption by 2020; it is now expected to have done so by the end of this year….
The country is home to 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, and four of the worst off among them are in the coal-rich province of Shanxi, in northeastern China….
China’s leaders plan to relocate 400 million people — equivalent to well over the entire population of the United States — to newly developed urban centers between 2000 and 2030….
The Gobi Desert, which now engulfs much of western and northern China, is spreading by about 1,900 square miles annually; some reports say that despite Beijing’s aggressive reforestation efforts, one-quarter of the entire country is now desert.
Pretty depressing stuff.
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