China’s Water and Air pollution Crisis
Published on Jan 13, 2014: Lately there’s been a lot of talk about Chinese air pollution; smog so thick, you can barely see the streets of Beijing.
But what you might not know is that China is facing a major water crisis. Rivers are drying up and there’s not enough water to go around. And what little water there is has been so polluted by chemical and industrial run off, it’s undrinkable.
And if the Three Gorges Dam didn’t cause enough trouble, the next great public work sure will. It’s called The South-North Diversion Project, and will link up the Yellow River with the Yangtze River, hopefully funneling water from the south to the water starved North. All it takes is drilling through the Himalayas.
Related
Shanghai Tower (650 meters) gives a good perspective on the air pollution (smog)
Reuters: Severe pollution in Beijing has made the Chinese capital “barely suitable” for living, according to an official Chinese report, as the world’s second-largest economy tries to reduce often hazardous levels of smog caused by decades of rapid growth.
Pollution is a rising concern for China’s stability-obsessed leaders, keen to douse potential unrest as affluent city dwellers turn against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has tainted much of the country’s air, water and soil. The report, by the Beijing-based Social Science Academic Press and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, ranked the Chinese capital second worst out of 40 global cities for its environmental conditions, official media reported on Thursday.
China’s smog has brought some Chinese cities to a near standstill, caused flight delays and forced schools to shut.
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About the Author: Chris Machens
Another indignity suffered upon the people of China..And for what? More
garbage to fill Walmart’s shelves? More money in the pockets of the rich
and the corrupt?
Why did they not see the damage done in other countries by un-regulated
industry? When no thought is given to the environment? It’s a simple
equation…You don’t shit where you eat!…and when all the potable water
is gone…when they cannot grow crops..or even run industry to churn out
more patio furniture and DVD players then where will the people go? The
☭ CCP ☭ is gonna look silly when everyone is dead..or has run away to
other places where they can still breathe and drink the water…
China’s drinking water is done! bug good old water incorp day. 322
Look up “Life Straw” Its a tube that filters the filthiest water instantly.
They cost around ten dollars and are given free to African children to
drink from mud holes.
They are probably made in china and could be made available to the public
there.
But like you said the Chinese government looks for mega solutions that
cause more problems and overlook the simple answers.
What’s funny is that China has access to one of the largest freshwater
sources in the world: The Himalayas. Despite this, the commie government
still managed to make water shortage a major problem because of poor
regulation
I very much agree with the core statement: No matter how big the oppression
is, a government that cannot deliver drinkable water, edible food and
non-poisonous air to breath is facing a serious problem, for these are the
basic needs of every individual. If China fails to adress this challenge,
this will cause the fall of the CCP. Sooner or later.
WATER IN CHINA.
Problem solved! Obama is selling fresh water from the Great Lakes to China.
He’s such a nice guy.
I wouldn’t swim in that pool of 1000 people, someone may have pee’d in that
pool or worse made a Baby Ruth…
wonder how much cloudseeding you need to fill up a lake?
They should invent fake water.
Fuck, I’m going to be possibly staying with relatives for a month. Guess I
can go for a month without brushing my teeth
They are dealing with their own problems head on and will succeed some
where down the line. What have our government been doing since Moon shots?
Why don’t they just build solar and wind powered desalinization plants
along the coast and channel that water to areas in need? I know it sounds a
little far-fetched, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Stuff like this is why I don’t think China is likely to become a hyperpower
under CCP rule.
Maybe when Chinese will struggle with fulfilling basic needs like clean
water they will finally wake up and do something about their idiotic
government.
people are 70% water, china has to many people they say, solution, ccp run
soylent green soda! it’s so simple! Chris just likes to exaggerate every
tiny chinese problem!
sad : (
scary look you did at the beginning!
It really smells like an addiction to large projects to keep 1.5 billion
people employed, than anything realistically related to logic. Great video.
wonder what crisis China is going to have next? Evil Mutants? *fingers
crossed*
When the price of a good increases people reevaluate the ways they use it.
A gallon of gasoline (equivalent to about four liters) in the US
frequently costs about as much as a liter of petrol in Europe, which partly
explains why European cars typically get much better gas mileage than US
autos. Water pollution and air pollution both are examples of “the tragedy
of the commons.” When a good that is held in common (like grazing access to
the “commons” in the UK before the 18th Century enclosure movement divided
up all the land and changed land tenure law) is available to all “for
free,” the result very often is wasteful consumption or pollution; hence,
tragedy of the commons. The solution is the “polluter pays” principle of
environmental law: that all of those polluting chemical plants have to pay
for cleaning up the water they’ve destroyed or the air they’ve fouled. That
principle in the US was successfully attacked by the Reagan-Bush
administrations and the polluting industry campaign donors. Apparently it’s
never been introduced in China. Preventing pollution in the first place is
clearly the way to go. Cap and trade laws are the way to go for curbing
greenhouse gas emissions, because they allocate pollution control spending
most efficiently.
In 20-40 years the effe4cts are to going to play major role! If you cant
have water
I contracted Shigella Dysentriae & needed to be hospitalized as soon as I
got back from China. No villages or countryside, just big & medium sized
cities all up & down the eastern coast from Behai to HK by train for a
month..& I only washed with it…I did drink soda with local ice in western
owned fast food places..god knows what I ate
This story definitely has “legs” – to use the journalistic parlance.
Long term, this may be China’s worst problem of them all.
2:47 This is hyperbole and offensive. I’ve been to China. While the water
conditions in Beijing were atrocious (undrinkable tap water at the Nikko
Hotel, open sewage running in drains throughout the city), I took a shower
and came out smelling fine.
Here is one for you Chris, up here in New York, Michigan and some other
states sit up here on the great lakes, we have products that come into the
states from china on freighter which they dump their water that they used
for ballast which is filled with polluted water and holds all kinds of
animals and material that is not native to the United States.. Like the
zebra muscles and a fish called the Goby The freighters are asked by the
country they are coming from to dump there ballast into our waters and then
when they get to the port of call, they then take in our water from the
great lakes to be used for ballast on their return trip which they bottle
and sell as soon as they get back to the their own country. all this
happens and our government gets on the sportsman with higher licence fees
and more and more regulations on what we can do. Instead of tackling the
real reasons.
How does anybody survive with such unhealthy water? They have already
murdered the Chinese river dolphin to be functionally extinct in less then
40 years. How does it support a nation with over a billion people?….and
now your telling me its going to effect another nation of over a billion
people my spreading the problem????? the dead pig thing put a delicious
taste of bile in my mouth, its such a clusterf@#$ it WILL effect the
enviorment globally at some point if not already. If you know anything
about the world currents and ecosystems etc. everything is in delicate
balance…….WE ARE F@#$ED…… chris is the man!!!
Untrue.. not anywhere,, New York City tap water is perfectly drinkable. We
have the best tap water on the planet. Except maybe for Dubai.
Well, China is obtaining our fresh water from our Great Lakes through the
2006 Great Lakes Compact. There is a loophole in it allowing companies to
take fresh water out of our Great Lakes as long as they are shipped in
containers below a certain size. Since 2006 the water level of the Great
Lakes has dropped significantly and China is one of the countries
benefiting. I guess if they can’t get their fresh water from home, getting
it from their enemy is the next best thing.
How bad do things have to get in China before the government finally does
something to reverse all this damage that is being done to the environment?
If things continue like this, I’m afraid it will be too late.
I’m going to live in Shanghai in September to study at Fudan university for
a semester, this is quite startling, haha
Your so good at doing these vids dude, your both professional and
interesting, never letting things get to dry. Not even this ep xD
Thanks for reminding me to help my country to build it much better. Thank
you so much.
gao is gonna miss me guys, soon I go to china to bring home my spanking
brand new Chinese wife. she is Cantonese so yes a much better
quality person than his kind, so I will be very busy banging my brains out
and not able to play on youtube much. just be happy my video camera not
on. you might go blind.
as a worst case scenario, mass dehydration, revolution, military rebuff,
tens to hundreds of millions dead.
well thank god I waited to drink beer tonight. the water in the south is
in large supply but it is all run off from the north and black. nothing
lives in it. when I was in Hainin china I turned on the shower and it
comes out yellow and smells like piss. oh I was naked and standing in the
shower when I turned it on.
+Zy Liu ,,, very true, I seen it happen in California.
Worth repeating: http://fotomen.cn/2011/12/polution/2/
All states in US have followed California, it really works.
I clearly remember, me as a little guy, here in North Carolina.
I felt the pain, I was fined $3500 for a small error I made while burning
some garbage.
Let’s make it clear, China is not censoring this information from their own
people. In fact,they are doing the best and trying to develop the new
technology to solve the problem. We hope they will succeed,we may learn
something from them for our future. The only thing Chris can do with the
bad spins is to fool you, my dear fellow Americans, but it won’t help us in
any way.
I was in Bangkok in summer 2008 and was horrified by the appearance of the
water in the city’s “canals”. I swear to you, it GLOWED GREEN. Scary and
it’s coming a city near US.
is the bottled water safe to drink?
way to go
i guess this is a part of the broader chinese movement towards energy
securing, seems the military build up should help enforce that or make it
easier to quell uproars
Why aren’t people aware of this. Are people so blind as to what is going on
this the planet. This planet is fucked and to late to repair it.,
especially since the U.S has stubborn people.
The result of greed?
India has sanitation and water problems just like China. India fighting
over water, and some rivers don’t even make it to the ocean anymore.
Western U.S. needs to learn to conserve water, but the farmers need large
amounts for their crops. All people of the world have problem with clean
fresh water, because it brings new wars and conflicts.
wow…I thought my country made bonehead decisions…