Environmental issues of China[环境问题]

[sUyAnG]

WIGO, 这里小声问一句, 你的LOGO是满州国旗吧? 呵呵!

[AGUI]

Exactly!!!
it's no doubt that solar energy will be the most important clean fuel in next generation.
Nearly 0 percent pollution,renewable and infinite use time are it's competitive advantages comparing to other raditional fuels .
But it still to expentive to most of common consumers,even to the government .
i think government should promote solar energy usage all over the China by offering more subsidy to consumers as well as the manufactures.

[wigo]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/tech/2007-...nt_6039210.htm

新华网济南４月２８日电（记者吕福明）国家发改委能源研究所李俊峰等人认为，我国太阳能热利用产业是通过市场拉动，企业自主发展起来的。当前我国已经具备实施强制性安装太阳能热利用设施的条件，国家或地方应制订强制安装太阳能热水器的法规细则或实施办法。

出席“２００７济南太阳能热利用大会”的李俊峰说，虽然我国拥有全球最大的太阳能热水器生产能力，也是全球最大的太阳能热水器应用市场，但我国的太阳能热水器普及率并不高，远远落后于塞浦路斯、以色列、希腊和奥地利等国家。欧美国家在太阳能热利用推广方面均出台了一些补贴政策。

目前，世界各国对太阳能热水器行业的激励政策可分为立法、财政激励政策和间接市场政策三大类。目前，我国太阳能热水器行业没有列入国家财政支持目录，没有稳定的资金来源，无法形成定期补贴机制。我国对太阳能热水器产品不提供任何补贴，也没有任何针对太阳能热水器行业的税收优惠政策。

业内专家建议各级政府制订强制性安装政策。李俊峰说，可以要求有条件的医院、学校、饭店、游泳池等热水消耗大户，优先采用太阳能集中热水供应系统；新建建筑在设计时要预留安装太阳能热水系统的位置和管道等构件，尽可能安装太阳能热水系统；对于既有建筑，如具备条件也要安装太阳能热水系统，特别是政府建筑和政府投资的建筑，要带头使用太阳能热利用设施。目前，我国海南、深圳、徐州、烟台等地方，已率先出台有关强制性安装太阳能的地方性法规政策。据云南省建设厅介绍，目前这个省已有１１个项目、６６１３平方米建筑实现太阳能与建筑一体化。

[wigo]

现在国内的热水器的水箱和集热管都是一体的，因为水箱太重，所以只能放在房顶，而不能像空调一样固定在外墙上。正因为这样，高层建筑无法用太阳能热水器。如果水箱和集热管分开，那么水箱就可以放在房子里，而集热管就可以固定在房外，那太阳能热水器就可以到处都用了。

不过，中国在这一方面已经比一般的发展中国家做得好得多了。

[wigo]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/local/2007...nt_6027306.htm

山东成为世界级太阳能热利用产业聚集区

新华网济南４月２５日电（记者　吕福明）据山东省发改委介绍，经过十几年的发展，山东太阳能热利用产业以年均３０％以上的速度增长，成长为世界级太阳能热产业聚集区。２００６年，山东太阳能热利用行业总产值达４５亿元，约占全国的１／５，居全国首位。

目前，山东具有一定规模的太阳能热利用企业有２００多家，年热水器生产能力达１００万台，高硼硅供应占全国市场的６０％以上，真空集热管占行业高端市场的７０％，是全国乃至世界太阳能热原料和产品的生产供应基地。山东太阳能产品凭借先进的技术、工艺及高水平的性价比，已销售到３０多个国家和地区。２００６年，太阳能产品出口总额２４００万美元。

２００６年，山东省的太阳能生产企业已累计推广太阳能热利用产品１５００万平方米，相当于整个欧盟最近１５年、北美最近３０年的推广总量；生产销售的集热管累计长度近１５万公里；全省太阳能热利用相当于年节电１０８多亿千瓦时，减少二氧化碳排放约５８５万吨，减少二氧化硫排放约５万吨。

[Red flag's egg]

hope it isn't just a plan, really good news,though a little bit late....

[wigo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/bu...ia&oref=slogin

HOUXINQIU, China — The wind turbines rising 180 feet above this dusty village at the hilly edge of Inner Mongolia could be an environmentalist’s dream: their electricity is clean, sparing the horizon sooty clouds or global warming gases.

But the wind-power generators are also part of a growing dispute over a United Nations program that is the centerpiece of international efforts to help developing countries combat global warming.

That program, the Clean Development Mechanism, has become a kind of Robin Hood, raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global warming gases. The biggest beneficiary is no longer so poor: China, with $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, received three-fifths of the money last year. And as a result, some of the poorest countries are being left out.

Scientists increasingly worry about the emissions from developing countries, which may contribute to global environmental problems even sooner than previously expected. China is expected to pass the United States this year or next to become the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases.

That draws attention to the Clean Development Mechanism, which has grown at an extraordinary pace, to $4.8 billion in transfer payments to developing countries last year from less than $100 million in 2002.

The Clean Development Mechanism raises its money through a complex market in trading pollution credits: businesses and governments in affluent regions like Europe and Japan help pay to reduce pollution in poorer countries, offsetting their own emissions. This helps advanced industrial nations stay within their Kyoto Protocol limits for emitting climate-changing gases like carbon dioxide.

For each ton of global warming gases that a developing country can prove it has eliminated, the secretariat of the Clean Development Mechanism, in Bonn, Germany, awards it a credit. Developing countries sold credits last year to richer nations for an average price of $10.70 each.

Its growth has come almost entirely by focusing on efficient projects in China and other fast-growing countries that spread the administrative costs over many large efforts, while poorer lands have received almost nothing. And that is why the program is becoming a battleground, pitting an unlikely coalition of bankers, traders, industrialists and environmentalists, who defend it, against economic development advocates, who warn of distortions.

According to the World Bank, China captured $3 billion of the $4.8 billion in subsidies last year for dozens of projects. Yet it accounted for less than two-fifths of the developing world’s fossil fuel consumption, the main source of warming gases.

One of the projects is the wind farm here, nestled on a pine-forested hill beside a blue lake fringed by broad fields tilled into long furrows of freshly planted wheat. It is profitable even without the subsidies, and is owned by a group of Chinese companies traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

But it is China’s financial sophistication that has helped it soak up so much in subsidies. A vigorous cottage industry of project designers and brokers has sprung up in Shanghai — with workers translating forms into Chinese, promoting the program and taking steps to make it easy and inexpensive for Chinese companies to participate.

“There are a lot of people who know how to do it,” said Tao Fuchang, the general manager and chief engineer of the Liaoning Zhangwu Jinshan Wind Power Electricity Company, which built and operates the turbines here.

Next in line are India, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, which get most of the rest of the subsidies, along with South Korea — incongruously classified as a developing nation by the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 pact to limit emissions that also led to the creation of the Clean Development Mechanism.

Trailing far behind are African countries. Payments totaled less than $150 million last year for all of Africa, where government officials say they have been largely left out of one of the biggest bonanzas for the developing world in many years.

“We see this problem everywhere in Africa,” said Sateeaved Seebaluck, a high-ranking environment official in Mauritius, an island nation east of Africa.

Even when very poor countries are able to organize development projects, they may lack expertise and must sometimes pay out as much as half the credits in the form of fees for international consultants and credit brokers.

United Nations executives respond, with considerable support from environmentalists, bankers and corporations, that the program’s primary task is to reduce the tonnage of carbon dioxide and other warming gases entering the atmosphere — regardless of where it comes from. By that measure, they say, the program is a success.

Kai-Uwe Schmidt, the Clean Development Mechanism’s executive board secretary, said the organization was acutely aware of regional imbalances in global warming projects and hoped to address them. But setting up an emissions reduction project usually requires considerable investment.

“We do not see many investments flowing into Africa in the first place,” he said.

Subsidies are readily available for a wide range of projects — straw-fired power plants, wind turbines, even the capture and burning of methane leaking from landfills. Though detailed procedures have been developed for projects in China and other fast-growing countries, they can easily be copied for use in other places.

But before manufacturers can obtain the subsidies, their national governments need to set up a legal framework for handling the money, which some of the poorest countries have not yet been able to do.

The projects that have produced the greatest number of credits so far involve attaching waste-gas incinerators to chemical factories that manufacture an ozone-destroying air-conditioner refrigerant, HCFC-22; these factories are found almost exclusively in the more prosperous developing countries.

Kristalina Georgieva, director of sustainable development strategy and operations at the World Bank, said the Clean Development Mechanism’s secretariat could simplify its rules to help poorer nations.

Ms. Georgieva said the secretariat should also pay more attention to fostering renewable energy in very poor lands, because 1.6 billion people lack any electricity and it is crucial to choose power-generating technologies for them that will contribute as little as possible to global warming.

“How the developing countries choose to electrify will determine the fate of the earth,” she said in a recent speech.

Some say the verification process is too burdensome for the poorest countries. But too much streamlining of the process could undermine the confidence of investors in rich countries that the pollution credits are genuine, Ms. Georgieva acknowledged in an interview. “What you may get is eroding trust in the system,” she said.

David Doniger, an environmental official in the Clinton administration who took part in many Kyoto Protocol drafting meetings in 1997 that led to the creation of the Clean Development Mechanism, said questions had been raised then about whether very poor countries would be able to obtain credits.

But the negotiators decided against any system for guaranteeing a division of credits by region, preferring one focused on reducing emissions wherever they occurred.

“Those were rejected on the grounds that you wanted to get more bang for the buck and they didn’t want this to turn into another U.N. institution with a lot of emphasis on regional balance,” said Mr. Doniger, who is now climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The wind turbine project here in Houxinqiu, an impoverished area of China, shows the pluses and minuses of the current system. It generates nearly 24 megawatts of electricity that would otherwise come from coal. China is already building enough coal-fired power plants each year to light all of Britain.

Farmers here still use mules to pull their steel-tip wooden plows and draw their aging wooden carts, the rough-hewn slats bleached white by years of sun and rain. The setting sun vanishes into a dark murk over the plains to the west, where China has been rapidly building coal-fired power plants.

Li Guohai, a local peasant riding his mule cart home with his wife on a recent evening, explained how he had received free electricity since the wind turbines were erected four years ago. He has saved enough money that he bought an all-steel plow for his mules to pull; the new plow now frees his son to finish junior high school and perhaps go to high school, Mr. Li said.

The project is narrowly profitable even without Clean Development Mechanism payments, Mr. Tao, the general manager, said. But the payments made the project more attractive and made it easier to raise money for it.

While Mr. Tao was reluctant to discuss the company’s finances, Clean Development Mechanism records show that the wind farm saves the equivalent of 35,119 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. At $8 a credit, that is worth $281,000. Mr. Tao does not rely on that money to make the project viable, as the C.D.M. subsidies aim to do, but it helps him pay for more turbines.

“Without the Clean Development Mechanism, we’d still be profitable,” Mr. Tao said. But “you need the C.D.M. for further expansion.”

[wigo]

A CSMonitor article covering similar topic

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p02s01-wogi.html

Its plans to limit emissions and boost efficiency could undercut a key argument against carbon dioxide limits in the US.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

If the United States starts charging people and businesses for the greenhouse gases they emit but China does not, America's economy could fall behind its fast-growing Asian competitor.

It's a crucial issue now bogging climate-change legislation on Capitol Hill. No lawmaker wants to push through laws that are likely to raise US energy costs and hand an advantage to global-warming scofflaws.

I will not support major legislation imposed upon the American economic system ... unless and until we have brought the Chinese on board," said Sen. Pete Domenici (R) of New Mexico, who serves on the committee that would move global-warming legislation, in a hearing last month.

But new evidence suggests that, despite a fast-growing economy that could make it the world's largest carbon-dioxide emitter as early as this year, China may be getting on board. In a bid to cut energy costs, boost energy security, and reduce air pollution, it could be essentially creating the largest greenhouse-gas-reduction plan on the planet.

Indeed, if the nation's leaders follow through, it may be the US playing catch-up with China – not the other way around. "You hear people in Washington saying we can't do anything if China doesn't do anything to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions," says Ned Helme, president of the Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP), a Washington think tank. "But that's basically a myth. China is really doing quite a lot, not under treaty but on their own."

Make no mistake, China's greenhouse-gas emissions are projected to increase rapidly through 2020. With its roaring economy and demand for coal-fired power, China will surpass the US as the largest producer of greenhouse gases sooner than expected, perhaps this year instead of in 2010, International Energy Agency officials said this week.

Yet China's rate of growth in emissions could slow thanks to sweeping reforms, started in 2001, to slash energy use at cement, steel, and paper factories, and for automobiles, Mr. Helme's group reported this week. Those reforms are on track to cut 168 million tons of greenhouse gases by 2010, says the CCAP.

That's a pittance compared with the nearly 6 billion tons of carbon-dioxide China emits annually. But that amount nearly matches the Bush administration's goal of reducing US emissions, voluntarily, by 183 million tons a year by 2010, says the CCAP report.

That small start may be just the beginning for China. Last year it embarked on a dramatic plan to boost energy efficiency 20 percent nationwide by 2010, a move that could eliminate as much as 1.4 billion tons of carbon-dioxide emissions, according to a recent Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis.

"They've really done a lot already to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency," says Mark Levine, who heads the China Energy Group at the lab. He notes, however, that growth in coal-fired electric power between 2001 and 2005 has vastly increased Chinese emissions.

China is also currently lagging behind its ambitious 2010 efficiency goals, Dr. Levine says. Instead of a 4 percent energy-efficiency gain, the nation achieved only a 1.2 percent cut last year, the first year of the program. But even if China gets only halfway to its goal, the reductions in emissions growth would be larger than the EU's Kyoto goal of cutting 682 million tons annually by 2012, Helme says.

Such a large cut means China could end up by 2010 with "by far the most aggressive global warming pollution reduction policy of any country in the world," Douglas Ogden, director of the China Sustainable Energy Program at the Energy Foundation, an organization in San Francisco promoting renewable energy and efficiency in China and the US, wrote in an e-mail.

Much still hangs, however, on whether China can replicate the energy-efficient gains it made through 2000, Levine says. China once had 20,000 efficiency experts, since disbanded. Now the central government is demanding long-term efficiency gains from provinces, whose eyes are fixed more on short-term profit.

Still, if China's new efforts were recognized, it might deflate what Helme calls a pair of "myths" that are inhibiting Congress from acting on global warming.

One myth, he says, is that developing nations like China aren't taking meaningful action to curb emissions. Another is that China and other developing nations, like Brazil, will be pollution havens that suck jobs out of the US. (An exception to the rule so far may be India, he says.)

Several new bills, including one proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) of New Mexico, include an "off ramp" to allow the US to back out of its emissions-reduction program if China does not do its part.

Domenici isn't yet satisfied, however. And in the House of Representatives, Democrats such as Rep. John Dingell of Michigan and Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia are worried about China gaining an unfair advantage. A number of Republicans, meanwhile, are digging in their heels even more. "You cannot have a legislative package that passes the House of Representatives that does not have an enforceable, meaningful mechanism to include the developing world, especially the Chinese," said Rep. Joe Barton (R) of Texas in hearings last month.

But if Congress doesn't recognize China's actions, the US might end up delaying climate-change policy for no good reason, some say. "For some lawmakers, their opposition has turned from 'we shouldn't do this because climate change isn't occurring' to 'we shouldn't do this because what we do has no meaning if China doesn't act,' " says Kyle Danish, a partner at Van Ness Feldman, a Washington law firm specializing in energy and environmental issues.

Business and labor groups, in an unusual moment of alignment, say emissions credits should be required for imported goods manufactured using energy- and CO2-intensive processes.

"Imposition of emission controls by some but not all major emitting nations disrupts the competitive trade balance between nations and inappropriately shifts jobs to countries without emissions controls, where manufacturing costs will be less," wrote American Electric Power president Michael Morris in an opinion piece in Energy Daily coauthored with Edwin Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Despite China's official hard line – government representatives are adamant that China won't curb emissions if it compromises economic growth – there are glimmers of flexibility. Earlier this month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signed an agreement to work on a successor to the Kyoto treaty.

But if the Chinese are acting to curb global warming, Congress needs to see that in clearer ways, some say. "We in the US would be better off to deal with the reality of what China is doing rather than the perception of where China stands," Levine says.

[wigo]

In short, China may be the best example of sustainable development, the fastest growing economy as well as forest, and perhaps the most aggressive agenda of emission reduction. Cheers.

[hkskyline]

Pollution, chemicals blamed for China's cancer rise

BEIJING, May 21, 2007 (AFP) - Pollution and the excessive use of chemicals in foodstuffs are sending cancer rates soaring in China, where it is already the number one killer, state press said Monday.

Cancer was the most lethal disease in both urban and rural areas last year, the China Daily said, citing a recent health ministry survey.

According to ministry statistics, it has been China's leading killer since at least 2002 but is now rising at an alarming rate.

The survey, carried out in 30 cities and 78 counties, found the death rate from cancer rose by 19 percent in urban areas and 23 percent in rural areas, although the report did not give a time frame.

"The main reason behind the rising number of cancer cases is that pollution of the environment, water and air is getting worse by day," the paper quoted Chen Zhizhou, a cancer expert at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, as saying.

"Many chemical and industrial enterprises are built along rivers so that they can dump waste into water easily... the contaminated water has directly affected soil, crops and food."

Excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides also pollute underground water, he said, while farmers are using additives on pigs, poultry and vegetables to make them grow faster.

Air pollution is a major cause of lung cancers, as harmful granules enter the lungs and cannot be discharged, the report said.

Large amounts of formaldehyde and related compounds also are widely used in home renovation materials and furniture, further polluting the air in homes.

"A high rate of cancer deaths has become a reality in areas where the environment is heavily polluted," the paper said, citing numerous examples of "cancer villages" in China that have high rates of deaths attributed to the disease.

[gaoanyu]

Jun. 11 - E-waste from America, Japan and European Unions is pouring into China through underground channels.

In south China's Guiyu, workers are poisoned by toxic fume chemicals when they melt e-waste and environment is severely damaged. Underground channel of smuggling e-waste into the country is making it impossible for the government to fight back.

Kitty Bu reports.

Soundbite:

Nie Yongfeng, professor of the department of environment of Tsinghua University, (Mandarin)

[VIDEO LINK FROM REUTERS]
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?vi...videoChannel=6

[Bandit]

Easy solution!

Have the US declare e-waste dual-use technology and export of it a national security threat to the US. Just watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4LIT...5%26v%3D2%26gV

[hkskyline]

Expanding Deserts Hurts Farmers in China
18 June 2007

ZHENGXIN, China (AP) - Half a century after Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" brought irrigation to the arid grasslands in this remote corner of northwest China, the government is giving up on its attempt to make a breadbasket out of what has increasingly become a stretch of scrub and sand dunes.

In a problem that's pervasive in much of China, over-farming has drawn down the water table so low that desert is overtaking farmland. Authorities have ordered farmers here in Gansu province to vacate their properties over the next 3 1/2 years, and will replace 20 villages with newly planted grass in a final effort to halt the advance of the Tengger and Badain Jaran deserts.

"I don't want to move," said Chen Ying, 58, sitting in a sparsely furnished bedroom dominated by a red, wall-sized poster of Mao, the communist founding father who sought to catapult Chinese farming and industry into modernity with the so-called Great Leap Forward.

"But if we keep using the groundwater, it will decline," said Chen. "We have to think about the next generation."

It's not just Chen's home region that's at risk.

The relocation program is part of a larger plan to rein in China's expanding deserts, which now cover one-third of the country and continue to grow because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and droughts.

The shifting sands have swallowed thousands of Chinese villages along the fabled Silk Road and sparked a sharp increase in sandstorms; dust from China clouds the skies of South Korea and has been linked to respiratory problems in California.

Since 2001, China has spent nearly $9 billion planting billions of trees, converting marginal farmland to forest and grasslands and enforcing logging and grazing bans.

The policy is driven in part by concerns over food, as farmland yields not only to the deserts but also to pollution and economic development. China has less than 7 percent of the world's arable land with which to feed 1.3 billion people -- more than 20 percent of the world's population. By comparison, the United States has 20 percent of the world's arable land to feed 5 percent of the population.

But the initiative is also a tacit admission by the government that the effort to feed the country at all costs may have backfired.

Chen was just a child when the government turned the rugged grasslands on the edge of the Tengger into an oasis.

In the 1950s, as part of Mao's scheme to boost food production, the government built the Hongyashan Reservoir in Gansu province witsoil to become contaminated with salt.

Worried the desert could reach the city of Minqin, 35 miles away, authorities decided to return the land to its natural state.

"If the government does nothing, it is scared that the entire area will become a desert," said Sun Qing-Wei, a desertification expert with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "There are alternative solutions like introducing new plant species or conserving water. But this is the quickest solution. The government can show the people they are doing something."

Chen, a grizzled farmer who sports a Mao cap, blue coat and baggy, mud-spattered pants, has planted dozens of trees outside his home to prevent the desert dunes from overrunning his property. He also switched from wheat to less thirsty cotton and fennel.

But he appears to have met his match in the government, which already banned the use of well water for irrigation and threatened to cut the electricity ahead of the scheduled move of his village later this year to a new location about 12 miles away.

Talk of the impending moves dominates the conversations of villagers, gathered around their coal-fired stoves to ward off the springtime chill. Most are reluctant to leave. Authorities are offering up to $784 per family to move 10,500 residents from Gansu Province, but the villagers don't trust the government to compensate them fairly.

Their ancestors are buried on their land, and their crops continue to earn a tidy income, they say -- even though the canals that once transported water to the area are bone-dry, and the wheat that thrived here is a distant memory.

"The government is taking this action against desertification, but we are the ones being forced to pay for this policy," said Li Jianzhu, a father of three in the village of Waixi, whose population has dropped nearly two-thirds to 60 residents.

Throughout the province, treeless, wind-swept plains stretch for miles in all directions. Gone are the knee-high grasses and the Qingtu Lake, replaced by sands from the expanding Tengger and nearby Badain Jaran deserts and with soil scarred white from salt.

The only signs of civilization in many areas are the herds of sheep munching on thorn bushes, the clusters of mud and straw homes and the burial mounds. Billboards promoting the country's one-child policy compete with those pushing slogans like "No Reclamation, No Overcultivation."

Many communities have been emptied altogether, leaving behind crumbling homes and empty courtyards.

The battle against deserts is playing out across much of western China. Desertification has caused as much as $7 billion in annual economic losses, the China Daily reported.

Over the past decade, Chinese deserts expanded at a rate of 950 square miles a year, according to Wang Tao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Lanzhou.

"There are quite a few countries with this problem but none on the scale of China because it is so big," said Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute. "You only have to go to northwest China and see that the numbers and size of dust storms are increasing."

Expanding deserts have contributed to a nearly six-fold increase in sandstorms in the past 50 years to two dozen annually, Wang said.

Global warming will worsen the problem, as rising temperatures lead to widespread drought and melt most glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, depriving lakes and rivers of a crucial water source, according to the U.N.-funded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Hotter, drier land is more vulnerable to soil erosion, Wang said. "This is the same problem the United States faced in the 1930s with the dust bowl."

Global warming also threatens to make a huge dent in grain production, which Brown said has already slipped from 432 million tons in 1998 to 422 million tons in 2006 because of desertification. At the same time, grain consumption has risen about 4.4 million tons a year to 418 million tons, in part because of rising demand for beef, chicken and pork.

The production declines have forced China to draw down its grain stocks, and eventually it will need to buy a massive 30-50 million tons a year on the world market, Brown said.

"It's not that they are likely to face famine in the next few years. But what they may face is rising food prices, and that can create political instability," he said.

In Dongyun village, Wei Quangcai and his deaf wife may offer a glimpse of that future. Once part of a thriving village of 200 people in Gansu province, they are the only ones left after neighbors fled two years ago.

Walking past the empty homes, Wei, 58, recalls the days when his village hummed with farmers chatting over a game of cards and the school was packed with children. Now, the only sounds are the wind whipping through the empty doorways. His son has left for a job in Beijing over his objections.

"We're the last people," Wei said. "It is lonely. It would be better if my son lived with us. But if he did, he wouldn't be able to find a wife."

[lilylidou]

海水淡化的成本可不低
估计北京的水费要翻几倍了吧

[Sen]

南水北调呢？

[The Cebuano Exultor]

That's really worrying!

[hkth]

Xinhua News:
Wind power plants lined up in Guangdong

[hkskyline]

China province vows water clean-up even if economy hurts

BEIJING, July 9 (Reuters) - The top official of an eastern Chinese province said he would be willing to sacrifice 15 percent of its booming economic activity to clean a lake beset by pollution-fed algae, state media reported on Monday.

Jiangsu Communist Party secretary Li Yuanchao "vowed to introduce strict no-compromise measures to curb water pollution at Taihu Lake, even if doing so slows economic growth," the China Daily reported.

Li demanded "the measures must be strictly implemented even if they caused a 15 percent downturn in the province's gross domestic product", the paper said.

In late May, many residents of Wuxi, a thriving Jiangsu industrial centre with an urban population of some 2.3 million, had tap water cut off after the lake was blanketed in putrid blue-green algae feeding on run-off from farms, homes and factories.

For years, officials have been vowing to clean up Taihu Lake with little to show for their promises. But Premier Wen Jiabao and other central leaders have said the country must tame its frantic growth to avoid environmental havoc.

Li, who has been widely mentioned as a future central leader, said cutting the lake pollution was now an "urgent" priority. Heavily polluting industries and farming activities would be curtailed, he said in a speech on Saturday, according to the People's Daily.

The lake is surrounded by textile, chemical, paper-making and other industries that pump out ammonia and nitrogen, filling the lake with nutrients that can ignite algae outbreaks.

"This is the debt we must pay to nature to avoid even worse losses to future generations," Li said of the curbs.

Last week, water supplies to 200,000 residents in Shuyang County, also in Jiangsu, were halted after ammonia and azote leaked from a chemical plant into a nearby river.

[Top Gear]

BEIJING

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, acknowledged Wednesday that Beijing's air pollution could force the postponement of outdoor events during next year's Olympics.

"Yes, this is an option," Rogge told CNN in a brief interview. "It would not be necessary for all sports, sports with short durations would not be a problem. But definitely the endurance sports like the cycling race where you have to compete for six hours, these are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed to another day."

The statement from Rogge came just hours before Beijing was to celebrate the one-year mark in the countdown for next year's opening ceremony. A party in Tiananmen Square to celebrate the moment was to be attended by 10,000 people, including Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Beijing's filthy air and clogged traffic have worried Beijing organizers and the IOC, but this was Rogge's strongest statement on the subject and was sure to embarrass local organizers.

Beijing officials have spent billions of dollars closing factories and moving others out of town, but nonstop construction and booming car sales have made air quality even worse.

Beijing Olympic organizing officials refused to comment on Rogge's statement. The media relations office said rules prevented spokesmen from answering questions over the telephone. The director of Olympic cycling events was in a meeting and not immediately available to comment.

from :
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan.../D8QSSN201.htm


I've never been to China but would like to for the olympics. But from this article, the pollution must be pretty bad there... hope it improves soon.

[wigo]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_6604811.htm

CHANGSHA, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- China has returned more than 24 million hectares of farmlands to forests since 1999, Xinhua learnt from a national conference on forestry work held here on Saturday.

China started the nationwide campaign of returning farmlands to forests in 2000, involving 124 million farmers of more than 32 million households in 25 provincial areas.

The campaign has contributed to more than 60 percent of the country's newly-made forest areas in recent years, according to the conference.

Farmers who were affected by the campaign had also received subsidies and grains, with subsidies accounting for almost ten percent of farmers' average annual income.

The government will earmark another 200 billion yuan (about 26 billion U.S. dollars) to the campaign in the coming years, making the total investment reach 4.3 trillion yuan.

A special fund will also be established to consolidate the achievements of the campaign.

China has planted 53.3 million hectares of forests in the past 58 years, more than any other country in the world, with forestry coverage rate rising from 8.6 percent to 18.2 percent, according to the State Forestry Administration.

China will continue implementing key projects in forestation, including returning farmlands to forests and grasslands and preserving natural forests, with the aim of increasing forestry coverage to 20 percent by 2010.

Editor: Mu Xuequan