Sunday, August 26, 2007

NYT: China pollution

New York Times is running a series on the pollution crisis in China. Check out Part I here.

"President Hu Jintao's most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as “Green G.D.P.,” was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or G.D.P., to reflect the cost of pollution.

But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China’s ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence."

It's an interesting dichotomy in China. The government recognizes that the environment is a serious issue here, but the businessmen often overpower state officials on a local level. An easy feat when the agency employs 200 people, versus the US EPA 18,000. Anyway, check it out if you're interested.