In order to better understand the 'coal hell', we studied a chapter of Toxic Archipelago (Walker, 2010), a book that captures vividly the human suffering caused by Japan's economic growth at the turn of the twentieth century. In this chapter the author describes mining accidents that led to the deaths of hundreds of miners in the name of economic growth. The author also presents the environmental damages caused by oil refineries.
China's contemporary situation is fairly similar to Japan's in the 1900s, as both countries experience exponential economic growth. The scale of China's energetic needs and the rate at which it is producing and importing coal are alarming. Mining accidents, acid rain and air pollution are the prices that China seemed willing to pay up to a few years ago. And then the central government started pushing for reforms and new technologies, whether or not these new regulations will be enough to have a positive impact on the environment, they constitute a step in the right direction... a bold move that Western powers seem to have so much trouble making!
Yun's comment: "Reading about the horrible working conditions inside Japanese coal mines made me question how much worst the working conditions in China are, considering how much faster China is developing currently compared to Japan previously. It is saddening to read about all the negative results of technology on the people of developing countries. I recently watched a documentary on Congo and all the things the people there must go through because of corporations' desire for the country's natural resources, and some of the images are maddening.
ReplyDeleteI must praise China for attempting to reform regulations and thinking about the environment."