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World News See other World News Articles Title: China's Environment Today Only those who are authentic, true and real can fully realize their own nature. If they can fully realize their own nature, they can fully realize human nature. If they can fully realize human nature, they can fully realize the nature of things. If they can fully realize the nature of things, they can take part in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth. If they can take part in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can form a trinity with Heaven and Earth. Confucius, Doctrine of the Mean. Though more numerous today than ever, the Chinese thrive on land that they have tilled for five thousand years, land that hosts ten percent of world’s plant species and fourteen percent of its wild animals, thanks to their assumption that, since man and Mother Nature are mutually dependent, man must care for his Mother. The world’s first ecological legislation, banning tree-felling in Spring and fishing in July, was passed in 2000 BC. In 700 BC, the noted Taoist, Guan Zhong, advocated a state monopoly of natural resources, “A king who does not protect the environment does not deserve to be called king”. In 400 BC, the Law of Fields ruled that river courses must not be blocked and vegetation must not be burned off in winter. In 200 BC, Yang Fu advocated protecting an exhaustive list of endangered species and, in 200 AD, Taoists chose twenty-four mountain sites as the first nature reserves in history, set detailed rules for the protection of their animals, plants, water, and mineral resources, and taught local people survival skills so that they could live without hunting or large scale agriculture. Their practice of boiling water (for sanitation) and steeping leaves in it (for enjoyment) gave birth to tea. In 1030 AD, Confucian Zhang Zhai[1] confessed, “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. Therefore, that which extends throughout the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters and all things are my companions”. By 1200 AD, China counted one hundred and fifty nature reserves that have served as the settings for legends of animal deities and immortals, and all of which still exist and still harbor rare and endangered animals and plants. Historian Jonathan Schlesinger says the First Qing Emperor practiced environmentalism five hundred years ago: I think of Changbaishan. It’s a volcano on the border between North Korea and China and the Manchus considered the lake inside the crater to be holy territory because it was the birthplace of the Manchus. The court had special rules on collecting ginseng or trapping sable and other fur-bearing animals on the mountain. When British explorers first climbed the mountain in the late 1800s, they referred to its untouched and unspoiled nature. In fact, it was very much touched. People had poached on the land, but the court had been using its resources to protect that territory. The People’s Republic of China has now converted the space into a nature reserve[2]. In 1909, concerned about America’s deteriorating soil health, Franklin King[3], chief of the USDA’s Division of Soil Management, found Chinese farmers growing crops in the same soil year after year with no loss of fertility and called their technique ‘permanent agriculture.’ We call it ‘permaculture’. In 1950, proclaiming that everyone has a democratic right to land since no one created it, Mao eliminated private land ownership. Thanks to public awareness of Western catastrophes, China avoided the environmental disasters that created our Superfund sites–on private land but repaired at public expense–and benefited from our fight for clean air. In 1952, air pollution killed twelve thousand Londoners on one weekend and hospitalized one hundred thousand more, an London’s NOx levels still exceed Beijing’s. The Chinese devoured Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s depiction of the impact of chemical runoff on American wildlife and learned that the Cuyahoga River was once so polluted that it caught fire. They watched newsreels of Tokyo traffic police wearing oxygen tanks in 1970 and their sailors found Japanese seas oily black miles from shore. Though developing countries rarely focus on the quality of economic growth but China, forewarned by our experience, never lost awareness of its environment. • • • From seventy-four percent in 2006, coal now accounts for fifty-eight percent of their energy consumption and, though air quality in some cities once approached Western levels, it is falling twice as fast. Sulfur dioxide and NOx emissions and water pollutants like ammonia and nitrogen peaked ten years ago and are falling steadily. China’s share of global carbon dioxide emissions doubled from fourteen percent in 2001 to twenty-eight percent in 2011, but has not increased since and the country is on track to reach its 2030 Paris Climate Agreement goals before the West and will complete its postindustrial cleanup three times faster and, by 2060, the country will be carbon neutral. Between 1980-2015, the economy grew sixtyfold while energy consumption grew fivefold[4]–an eighty percent decline in energy intensity–while renewable power consumption should reach twenty percent of total consumption by 2025. When London’s Environmental Investigation Agency reported that dozens of Chinese companies were still using toxic CFC-11 to make foam, the government phased out production of 280,000 tonnes of ozone-depleting substances and set quotas on the manufacture, import, and use of polluting chemicals like carbon tetrachloride. In 2015, the Pearl River Delta Industrial Trial Spot became the first region to reach America’s EPA air quality standard and, by 2017, ninety percent of China’s cities had reached their targets. The World Health Organization says that, between 2013-2016, the sixty biggest Chinese cities lowered particulate emissions by thirty percent[5] and, between 2014-2017, wealthy Beijing used using ultra-Low Emissions (ULE) coal-fired power stations and natural gas plants to reduce[6] pollutant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter by sixty-five percent annually. In 2016, the mayor promised to reduce particulate density by one-third and deliver fifty-six percent good air quality days by 2020–and made it on schedule. Internal combustion engines will be gone by 2025 and, by 2030, renewables will provide ninety percent of Beijing’s energy. The ecosystem has improved[7] too, since the government launched its ‘ecological civilization,’ reforms. The Loess Plateau, 250,000 square miles of yellow soil, had lost so much tree cover by 1902 that it was called ‘China’s Sorrow’ for its cycles of flooding, drought, and famine. Sparse vegetation, loose soil and intense, heavy rains made it the most eroded area on earth and its billions of tons of its yellow sediment gave the Yellow River its name. In 1978, volunteers began planting a hundred billion trees along the Great Green Wall[8], a three-thousand-mile windbreak to stop the encroaching Gobi Desert. By 2018, they had reduced[9] dust storm frequency and shrunk rocky desert by fifteen hundred square miles, cut local poverty by twenty percent annually, lowered sediment runoff by ninety percent[10], lifted forest cover from nineteen to twenty-five percent and welcomed the return of almost forgotten birds and animals. Since 2015, the Environment Ministry has created ten pilot national parks[11] with two-thirds the area of America’s venerable system. Four zones of ‘protected areas with Chinese characteristics with national parks as the main body’ range from stringent–all human activity outlawed–to lenient, designed to spur ecological tourism and public visits. Each has 2025 goals ranging from concentrating flagship species, to increasing forest cover, to reducing the number of mines. At the headwaters of the Yellow, the Yangtze, and the Mekong rivers, Sanjiangyuan National Park, on the Tibetan Plateau, is stabilizing the population of nomadic herders, providing skills training, and encouraging them to live and work in townships while raising incomes inside the park’s borders. In a 2017 TV address, President Xi referenced the environment eighty-nine times, “We want our modernization characterized by harmonious co-existence between man and nature–because any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. Since limpid waters and lush mountain forests are invaluable, we must seek a simple, moderate, green, low-carbon lifestyle in eco-friendly communities”. He consolidated seven agencies into a Ministry of Ecological Environment, made it responsible for the entire natural domain, and promised not to export pollution through investment or foreign policy. The new Ministry immediately placed a fishing ban on the entire Yellow River basin, its tributaries and lakes and, invoking[12] the new environmental standards, levied pollution penalties and initiated an immense emissions trading scheme[13] that taxes pollution at its source and recycles the tax revenues into sustainable projects. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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