Blog 5: Chia's War on Pollution!

Wednesday, we saw a huge point go up for sustainability. China has officially declared a war on pollution. What does this mean? It means that one of the most polluted countries has decided to finally do something big for the environment. China is putting 35 million dollars towards the environmental protection agency there to hopefully reduce the toxic smog that has blanketed most Chinese cites. The main cause of this is amount of coal-power plants around the country. Luckily, a total of 50,000 small coal-fired furnaces will be shut down this year. Their government will also be implementing the clean water action plan. This is planned to strengthen the protection of sources of drinking water, prevent and control water pollution in key river basins, and carry out land restoration. Pollution has been a big issue for many years so I'm sure many Chinese citizens are excited to hear this news.

China is one of the most polluted countries and it's really nice to see that they are making this a national issue. Many times we see that environmental issues take a back seat to other issues until it become a huge problem. It ends up turning into more of a, "Wow, China is finally deciding to do something?" rather than, "Wow! Look at China take the lead in sustainability!" Pollution has been an issue for years there are their industrial revolution has sky-rocketed. This is another example of how developing countries need to start on the path of sustainability, rather than worry about it later. This is called an end-of-pipe solution where we see that instead of stopping the problem as the source, we wait until the end of the pipe to do something. Globalization has encouraged this because developing countries want become developed as quickly as possible, no matter the cost. This is a trait that every developed country has passed down, but we still wonder why things are only getting worse.