Yesterday’s New York Times has a piece on the environmental cost of economic growth in China titled As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes. The long, detailed piece focuses on the huge impact heavy industry has had on public health in China and the lack of government action or effective regulations to address these problems. Just to give you an idea of some of the statistics mentioned:

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.

The article analyzes a number of reasons why the government fails to deal with the problem despite the fact that it has tried to take steps to conserve energy and create stricter regulations. A few reasons discussed include China’s “addiction” to growth, political corruption on a local level and the suppression of political dissent. However, this is what jumped out at me:

Chinese leaders argue that the outside world is a partner in degrading the country’s environment. Chinese manufacturers that dump waste into rivers or pump smoke into the sky make the cheap products that fill stores in the United States and Europe. Often, these manufacturers subcontract for foreign companies — or are owned by them. In fact, foreign investment continues to rise as multinational corporations build more factories in China. Beijing also insists that it will accept no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues that rich countries caused global warming and should find a way to solve it without impinging on China’s development.

I added the bold here because, while I don’t think these leaders can just pass the buck onto other countries, this paragraph raises an important point that could be much more thoroughly addressed in the article – the role of the United States, Europe and multi-national corporations in China’s environmental crisis.

Clearly, the U.S. and Europe are fueling China’s economy by purchasing the majority of products being produced cheaply in China – obviously this is a problem. But, of major concern is that many of these polluting companies are big multi-national corporations. I would be really interested to know what percentage of the companies that are polluting China’s skies and rivers are U.S. or foreign owned. I would imagine the percentage is fairly high. This is something that the article fails to examine.

It then goes on to say….

Indeed, Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their way to prosperity and worried about environmental damage only after their economies matured and their urban middle classes demanded blue skies and safe drinking water.

I see a few problems with this argument. To put it politely – I don’t think our government is all that concerned with the environment and the idea that China is “behind” us or less “mature” is problematic. Also, as the article details towards the end, we might have a lot more government employees dedicated to dealing with environmental regulations than China does, but that doesn’t mean they are forever making stricter polices or adequately dealing with the problem. We also have many major corporations lobbying for ever-weaker regulations…

Moreover, haven’t we effectively outsourced much of our industrial environmental problems to places like China? So much of our industry has gone overseas in search of cheap labor and fewer environmental regulations that we have not only moved our jobs overseas, but also our much of our environmental problem – we haven’t actually solved much.

So, I ask is China’s pollution problem just China’s problem?

Aside from the fact that air pollution from China is impacting air quality in L.A., making China’s pollution literally ours, it seems like there are a number of other reasons why China’s problem is also ours.

This post was written by Natasha Winegar. While Jonathan is away on vacation, she will be posting in his place.