Economic development at the expense of the environment is like grabbing a good seat in the cinema of a sinking luxury liner.
Even worse, the more rapid the development, the more damage it does to the environment.
We are heavily indebted to environment. This debt will eventually render our lives completely bankrupt unless we start paying it.
Such debt finds concrete expression in the thawing of icebergs in the Arctic and Antarctic, the disappearance of glaciers in high plateaus, the rise of temperature and increased frequency of extreme weather conditions.
As the world's largest developing country with the world's largest population, China faces heavy pressure not just to feed its 1.3 billion people but to provide them with a better life. Some localities actually adopted a polluting strategy to increase their gross domestic product in developing their local economy.
The fact that the country failed to reach the planned target of reducing sulfur dioxide discharge and chemical oxygen demand during the 10th Five-Year-Plan (2001-05) suggests that our government has a hard battle ahead to realize the current goals.
Rather than decreasing emissions by 2 percent, as required by the central government development strategy, the discharge of sulfur dioxide and the chemical oxygen demand increased by 1.8 and 1.2 percent last year compared with 2005. The cause was economic growth faster than expected, indicating that much greater efforts are needed.
The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) said yesterday that they would take more effective measures to ensure that new thermo power plants install facilities to remove sulfur from coal before burning it. This gives us some hope that the discharge of sulfur dioxide will be reduced over the next four years.
The SEPA's determination to stop the operation of those factories which do not meet the required standards in discharging sulphur dioxide and polluted water sends a message that the administration is waging war on air and water polluters.
But we can only win this battle when those polluters are made to realize that what they are doing is no less than sinking the ship that we call planet Earth.
(China Daily 02/13/2007 page10)
