China feels the pain of pollution

Its a pretty well recorded fact that China is a dirty dirty heavily polluted place right now. The cost of their breakneck speed has been a huge toll on the natural environment of China. I don’t just mean the pretty trees and butterflies — everything from their potable water network, the air, the rivers and most urban environments in China are in a terrible state.

The Guardian [Have I made it clear to you yet that this is a great source of enviro-news?] had a great piece yesterday on the situation in China. It turns out that the head of China’s environmental Agency (EPA equivalent) stated that much of China’s social and political unrest is related to the terrible environmental conditions most people live in.

Today there was a piece on the Chinese government banning Bank loans to firms that repeatedly break environmental rules. Considering that anywhere from 75% of Chinese companies have been accused of breaking pollution laws this could be an interesting new rule to put into place.

The Chinese environmental agency has some very good laws on the book — against toxic dumping, against e-waste, for clean air etc. The problem has been one of enforcement. I wonder if the head guy came out with that public statement so he could get some more clout to enforce what his departement is ment to do.

I also had an interesting chat with a Fletcher grad who works at the IMF and lived in Beijing for 5 years. She thinks that the way they will make the air clean enough for the Olympics will be to turn off all the factories around and in Beijing for a month before the games. I guess the Chinese will have to see what costs them less money — cleaning up the factories and installing scrubbers and filters, or just shutting them down for a month?

Green God

An interesting element of the green movement is position taken by religious institutions. I have to confess that I am not very well versed in where they stand, or rather if they take any stand on the issue of environmental protection, climate change and the role that their believers should take.

A rumour I heard about fundamentalist American Christians (a long time ago) is that part of their belief is that accelerating environmental damage and climate change is part of the count down to judgement day. Apparently, since they all think they are saved and want to get away from the un-saved masses of the earth they don’t mind hurrying up the process. However, this might be all make belief, and is probably, no definitely, the view of a small fringe minority.

In the UK Guardian today they have an article on Bishop of London (that would be the Church of England for the poorly versed in religious authority) stating that it is a christian duty to save the planet. Apparently he practices what he preaches.

This brings me to my point. I’m fascinated, assuming my first generalization of fundamentalists was true, that people who read the same book and both seek essentially the same ultimate goal would have such different takes on how to act within our natural environment. The question then becomes how important a role will these differing views play in religious doctrine and what it means on a global whole. There are, approximately, 1 billion catholics and add the million more christians, and thats a lot of people who take guidance from the same source.

So, I wonder, what does the bible say about protecting, or not protecting, the earth? And what does it define as protection and stewardship?

British Gas New Energy

The Guardian reported today on a British Gas launching a new business unit specialized in providing energy saving services to customers. Apparently 25% of the UK’s CO2 emissions come from homes and British Gas New Energy, as the new branch will be known, will provide services to help reduce household emissions. Their services will include:

1. Sale of photovoltaic panels to heat customers water: this is a great way to conserve energy and only requires small panels to do the job
2. Advise customers on how to reduce their energy usage to cut costs and emissions

British Gas sees this move as a potentially high grossing revenue stream for the company, a great example of a “green is good for business” model.