The Dragon Coughs

[Whoha]

They'll just have to import food,air, and water, which their massive trade surplusses and vast hard currency reserves should easily pay for. China

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Blake
Buying Chinese made is starting to look not just immoral, but morally reprehensible.

You're overlooking MSNBC's Erin Burnett's argument that, if China isn't allowed to sell us poisoned food and lead-painted toys, the prices at Wal-Mart will rise.

[dannubis]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
How are they going to be able to hold Olympic events?

You did perfectly fine as well...

[DinoDoc]

Eh?

[General Ludd]

Progress

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


You're overlooking MSNBC's Erin Burnett's argument that, if China isn't allowed to sell us poisoned food and lead-painted toys, the prices at Wal-Mart will rise.

I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for Chinese products that won't poison me or dramatically harm the environment.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Whoha
They'll just have to import food,air, and water, which their massive trade surplusses and vast hard currency reserves should easily pay for. China

This made me think of Spaceballs.

[Agathon]

You forgot about the opium dens and sexual slavery of white protestant women, DaShi.

[DaShi]

Good! The protestants deserve it.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DaShi
Good! The protestants deserve it.

I lol'd.

[East Street Trader]

Eventually, I guess, we will come to appreciate that everyone shares the air and the water and the weather.

But for now it would seem that we each need to do what we can individually and within each nation to cut back our own pollution.

If we wait until everyone is willing to join in it may turn out to be too late.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Blake

Okay, on a realistic solution.
From Kim Stanley Robinson's "60 days and counting"
(It's not much of a spoiler because this is not hugely relevant to the plot as in it doesn't effect the characters)

Spoiler:

Near the end of the book, the Chinese ecology basically starts dying - at such a rate that it becomes obvious that China itself IS going to die. And China are like "Oh sh*t we f*ck up" and shut down most their powerplants and beg the west for help.

It's actually not clear what the timeline is (deliberately), but probably about 2015-2020, certainly there is a complete lack of futuretech.

China-extinction level-event is actually looking pretty plausible.

Sounds rather silly. What would possibly make the west immune to the same ecocide, let alone able to save china? Are we all living in some sort of techutopia biodomes by then? No, wait. You said no future tech.

[Last Conformist]

But while southern China is relatively wet, the north, home to about half of China’s population, is an immense, parched region that now threatens to become the world’s biggest desert.

This, at least, we need not fear: northern China isn't big enough to house a desert the size of the Sahara (about the size of China) or the Antarctic desert (about one and a half times the size of China).

[aneeshm]

Ah, Communism, how we love you so!

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Ah, Communism, how we love you so!

China's growth is fueled by the production of consumer goods for western markets.