The China Syndrome

A powerhouse economy is learning to lighten its carbon load

This spring I traveled around eastern China with staff from NRDC's new Beijing office. I fully expected the murky air and the urban landscape jammed with factories and power plants. But I was still stunned by the enormous scale and pace of change. In the six years since my last visit, Beijing's streets have become clogged with cars -- not bicycles, as before. Construction that began only last year on a new, 17-mile subway line will be completed by the 2008 Summer Olympics. We traveled south to tour the port of Shenzhen, which 30 years ago was a sleepy town; now it is the fourth-largest port in the world.

China is paying a steep price for this rapid growth. More than 400,000 Chinese die each year from pollution-related illnesses. Just a few years ago, experts predicted that by 2020 China would overtake the United States as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases; newer projections say that will likely happen this year. Neither the Chinese people nor the rest of the planet can survive this onslaught. But here's what gives me hope: China's leaders understand the environmental crisis and are quickly putting greener policies into place.

I saw signs of this everywhere we went. In Nanjing, we met with provincial leaders who offer financial incentives to businesses to buy energy-efficient factory machinery. The program -- which NRDC helped design -- is about to go nationwide. In Beijing, we learned that China's State Council had recently announced that it will evaluate the job performance of provincial governors and the heads of China's 1,000 largest enterprises based on how well they curb energy usage.

China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of wrenching poverty. Millions more aspire to a higher quality of life. But China's powerhouse economy is generating pollution and inefficiency similar to what our industrial boom created 100 years ago, only at a much greater pace and on a much broader scale. Thirty-five years ago, on Earth Day, we began to clean up the legacy of our growth, but the planet simply cannot wait decades for China to do the same. We have to use our experience and China's ingenuity to do it better and faster this time -- to break the link between economic growth and environmental destruction. Much of China's pollution is generated by factories producing the goods we buy in the United States every day; we bear some responsibility for helping to clean up the pollution that we've outsourced.

NRDC is working with Chinese officials and dedicated citizens to help the country reach both its economic and its environmental goals. The progress they make will benefit not only China but the entire planet.

Frances Beinecke
President