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Chinese Environmental News

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Minmetals embarrassed by environmental breach
Nov 13, 2009 (WiC 38)

"The whole of the river was an opaque, pale brown fluid,” wrote the scientist. He concluded it was a “fermenting sewer”. The river in question was the Thames, under investigation 155 years ago by the scientist Michael Faraday. In 1858 ...

Why the Three Gorges Dam is in the news again
Nov 6, 2009 (WiC 37)

Mao Zedong once wrote a poem in which he observed “to struggle against the earth is endless joy”. Another slogan popular during his 37 year imperium was that “Man must conquer nature”. He may have got the idea from Stalin’s ...

A paradise (but no jobs)

The birds and the fish are happy; the locals of Poyang less so
Oct 2, 2009 (WiC 33)

The consequences of failing to protect the environment are widely apparent in China. The results are usually worrying. But the county of Poyang is something of a paradox. In Poyang’s case, environmental protection is working. But it has ...

Why the government is 100% sure there’ll be no rain on October 1
Sep 25, 2009 (WiC 32)

There’ll be no raining on their parade next week, if Beijing’s rocket men have their way. The city’s weathermen would normally estimate a 30% chance of drizzle at this time of year. But few expect that participants at the National Day ...

Green, but is it sustainable?

Some say China is the green-tech leader. Others see an overblown reputation
Sep 11, 2009 (WiC 30)

It was a call to arms – or at least the environmentally-friendly equivalent. Last month, two titans of corporate America chose an opinion piece in The Washington Post to warn of China’s “breathtaking commitment” to winning the clean ...

Only 1% of the nation’s 640 million mobile phones get recycled
Sep 4, 2009 (WiC 29)

While iPhones and Ophones may be battling it out as China’s smartphone of choice, the country’s environmentalists have a different challenge: how to dispose of the country’s rapidly growing pile of discarded mobile phones. As the ...

Encouraging ‘Tone’

Former British leader Tony Blair jets in on mission to save world’s climate
Aug 28, 2009 (WiC 28)

When Tony Blair visited China in late 2007 – shortly after stepping down as the UK’s prime minister – his trip could hardly have been described as altruistic. The former Labour MP flew home $500,000 better off, after making a speech and ...

A city of bad elements

How mercury has poisoned Wanshan
Aug 21, 2009 (WiC 27)

In Wanshan they have a saying: Don’t drink the water, and don’t eat the vegetables. And with good reason. Until recently, Wanshan was the centre of the mercury industry, having first discovered deposits of the liquid metal in the 7th ...

The river sweats oil and tar, wrote TS Eliot – and often worse in China
Jul 31, 2009 (WiC 26)

It all started for Huo Daishan with photographs of dead fish. Huo was a newspaper photographer on an assignment at China’s Huai River. He remembered how blue the water was in his youth. Now a purplish foam covered the surface. Beneath it, ...

Unilever 1, the Vatican 0

Multinational’s carbon cops push for cleaner solution at its Chinese plant
Jul 31, 2009 (WiC 26)

Even the Vatican had given up on straw. Famously, news of the election of a new Pope was traditionally greeted with white smoke, aided by the throwing of straw on top of burning ballot papers. No longer, however, as the cutting edge Conclave ...

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