The alarming pollution levels in China have now become a global concern. Fueled by the spoils of its fast emerging economy, the people of China have become voracious consumers, an effect of what some call as the country’s ‘money-induced euphoria.’

This consumerism has brought about a need for raw materials. Upwards of 75 percent of all its forests has vanished. The country also uses millions of tons of coal as its economy is largely coal-backed. All these phenomena have contributed to China’s massive contribution to global warming. The effects of coal-burning and car exhaust thicken the air in China with poison.

China has already topped the US as the world’s leading CO2 emitter.

Motor vehicles cause only 3-4 percent of China’s greenhouse-gas emissions, but it is projected that the present volume of cars in the country at 33 million will grow to 130 million in just a little over a decade. It is, after all, being groomed as the new global car manufacturing hub. It has also managed to keep friendly relations with such ill-fated countries as Sudan precisely for the latter’s oil.

China is also a huge dumping ground for the world’s e-waste. ‘Roughly 70 percent of the world’s discarded computers and electronic equipment ends up in China, where it is scavenged for usable parts and then abandoned, polluting soil and groundwater with toxic metals.’

The pollution nightmare in China has started to affect places outside of the country. The country’s sulfur dioxide emissions that come back down in the form of acid rain have severely destroyed forests in Korea and Japan, as well as compromised air quality in as far as the US.

The pollution of China’s seas and river systems due to untreated waste and agricultural runoff has eventually killed the fish and other marine species in the China Sea. An imbalance in such marine environments endangers marine creatures.

Image

Via The Christian Science Monitor