The Chinese aren't denying Man's role in global warming, but they're blaming it on the West.
China and the environment
The East is grey
China is the world’s worst polluter but largest investor in green energy. Its rise will have as big an impact on the environment as on the world economy or politics
Aug 10th 2013 | BEIJING
"ALL industrial nations one day hit an environmental turning-point, an event that dramatises to the population the ecological consequences of growth. In America that event occurred in 1969 when the Cuyahoga river in Ohio, thick with pollutants and bereft of fish, caught fire. America’s Environmental Protection Agency was founded the next year. Strict environmental laws passed by Japan in the 1970s followed the realisation that poisonous mercury spilled from a plastics factory was claiming thousands of lives around the bay of Minamata.
"The fetid smog that settled on Beijing in January 2013 could join the ranks of these game-changing environmental disruptions. For several weeks the air was worse than in an airport smoking lounge. A swathe of warm air in the atmosphere settled over the Chinese capital like a duvet and trapped beneath it pollution from the region’s 200 coal-fired power plants and 5m cars. The concentration of particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less, hit 900 parts per million—40 times the level the World Health Organisation deems safe. You could smell, taste and choke on it.
"Public concern exploded. China’s hyperactive microblogs logged 2.5m posts on “smog” in January alone. The dean of a business school said thousands of Chinese and expatriate businessmen were packing their bags because of the pollution. Beijing is one of China’s richest cities. Before the 2008 Olympic games it had relocated its smelliest industries to surrounding provinces. If anywhere should be cleaning itself up, it is the capital. Yet even Communist bigwigs, opening their curtains each morning near the Forbidden City, could not avoid the toxic fog.
"Journey to the West
"The “airpocalypse” injected a new urgency into local debate about the environment—and produced a green-policy frenzy a few months later. In three weeks from the middle of June, the government unveiled a series of reforms to restrict air pollution. It started the country’s first carbon market, made prosecuting environmental crimes easier and made local officials more accountable for air-quality problems in their areas. It also said China—meaning companies as well as government—would spend $275 billion over the next five years cleaning up the air. Even by Chinese standards that is serious money, equivalent to Hong Kong’s GDP or twice the size of the annual defence budget."
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