lol i was surprised to see the whitehouse didnt make the list lol.
but it was good to see that no american city was in the top 10, although environmental standards under bush have eroded.
i could understand china being rated at the top, with its massive industrial surge occuring. industry usually = environmental damage. and what most people dont understand is, humans are part of that environment. whenever we effect or change that environment, we stand to change or damage ourselves in the process.
sue, is there anyway to get a list of top american places that are polluted? i looked but so far have not been able to find anything recent.
this is a link i found published this year (late jan), with a totally differnt list, although a few are mentioned in both lists. it was surprising not to see any chinese cities on the link i provided. i am wondering why.
i am also wondering how the chinese pollution will effect the athletes at the upcoming olympics. do you think the chinese govenment will issue a temporary stoppage when the games are in session?
------------------------------------------ debating conservatives is easy. so easy, even a caveman can do it!
"if this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck lot easier, just so long as im the dictator" -GWB Dec 18,2002
Posts: 1614 | Location: ft myers florida area | Registered: 23 September 2006
A scientist I spoke to once said that "the solution to pollution was dilution." I told him the solution to pollution is prosperity.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
I don't know of an American list, ftmyersfisherman, but I expect there is one somewhere.
Beijing really does have problems. There are details here.
If the Olympics causes Beijing to come up with permanent improvements to its air quality, then the Olympics will actually have been worthwhile. I wish them luck.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
A prosperous population won't stand for an environment that isn't aesthetically pleasing. When the Cuyahoga River caught on fire in Cleveland, it's citizens had enough, and they had enough money to fix it.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
There's a really great documentary out right now, "Manufactured Landscapes", which depicts the places in the world the director thinks have most been impacted by industrialization
A beach at Chittagong, Bangladesh, where ocean-gonig ships are scrapped either by rudimentary machinery or by collective manpower. Including oil tankers.
Towns in China where they melt plastic component boards in order to then strip off, by hand, any reusable metals. And various heavy metals seeping into the water table as a result of the melting and unused waste. And the smell from ten kilometers off.
China gets 50% of the world's "E-waste".
Also lots of shots of open-pit or leech mining.
Also depictions of what the big manufacturing plants are like in China. A woman whose sole task is to punch spray-holes through small plastic caps. And other soul-destroying mundanity.
As screwed up as China was under Mao (with his crazy schemes like The Great Leap Forward), it could be that the country being 80% rural-occupation had more of an aspect of fulfillment for the workers. Maybe more teamwork than assembly line. But they seem to want to go along with this hyper-production, as it exists now. Might not have much say in the matter, either way.
And Cuba has it right: industrialization is not worth dehumanization. Which is why Cuba since Castro has never accepted global-capital dictates.
The hyper-production will crash of its own weight. Peak oil and pollution attendant to the hyper-production will not allow it to continue.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: BrentBoz-Hell,
It seems to me that the more prosperous nations have a bit more pollution than the non-prosperous ones.
The more prosperous China becomes, the more polluted it gets.
The air quality in Denver isn't as good as when I was a kid.....when the state was poorer.
Thankfully, we don't have the nation's most toxic pollutant in Colo. It sits in the White House.
Prosperity, in the modern understanding of the term, creates pollution. To eliminate pollution, you have to figure its costs into the production price of the products that create it. Omit pollution at the source of creation and add that to the price of the product. If that makes the product "too expensive", it isn't a viable product. Ultimately, that cost will be paid for.
Retired Monk "Ideology is a disease"
Posts: 3412 | Location: denver co | Registered: 17 April 2007
polycarp posted: "It seems to me that the more prosperous nations have a bit more pollution than the non-prosperous ones."
Did you mean that more prosperous nations create more waste, which they then unload on desperate, poorer economies?
I would guarantee that there's not one caucasian on earth doing the hazardous, unhealthy work that the Chinese & Bangladeshis are shown doing in this film, but the waste was generated either in the "first-world" (E-waste)or in service of the first world (oil tankers).
A prosperous population won't stand for an environment that isn't aesthetically pleasing.
Prosperous communities tend to export the pollution to less prosperous communities.
But pollution knows no boundaries, and some of it is spreading around the globe by air and sea. And the ones who are prospering most from it, the fossil fuel barons, seem to be in no hurry to do anything about it. \By the time they do, it will likely be too late.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Watch what happens in China now as they realize they can't see the sun any more. Their prosperity will have them scrambling for stack scrubbers and clean manufacturing technologies. We went through the same revolution earlier in the last century.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
The pea-soupers caused Britain to clean up its dark satanic mills, but Britain's main saviour was the advent of cleaner-burning natural gas from the North Sea. What will save China?
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Technology. There is an explosion of new technologies that deal with emissions right now. I don't think they have a problem with enforcement. They kill bad managers.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Call me crazy (go ahead), but it seems to me that expanding population coupled with demand for a caucasian-style array of technological support of each and every one's own life will utilize resources to the extent that all considerations other than sustenance of human luxury will be moot. And even that one particular obsession may render itself moot, due to overdemand of resources.
A brave and adventurous population would prioritize the living wild planet, as our imaginations are only truly engaged in relation to that from which we come.
What are we, a bunch of girly-men who want nothing other than to have the world at our beckon fingertips ("let your fingers do the walking")?
What is the sustainable modicum? I walked ten blocks to rent this computer but am not at all sure that's good enough.
Two solutions mentioned above, Sawdust's was prosperity, Ron's was democracy, but both are supposedly in place in the US. However, the first- prosperity, when horded at the source infects if not totally kills the second- democracy. Democracy , by definition should be the voice of the governed, not just the voice of the governor [in this case the voice of the corporate source of prosperity] It takes more than one chickenshit to vote for the people.
Blaise Pascal Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Pensees
Posts: 2917 | Location: Sverige | Registered: 21 June 2005
This is where I first saw the list: World's Worst Polluted Places 2007. And you can get the complete report that has a section on each city. I know it was a link on one of the above links but thought it should be here also.
douglas there is much interest in what needs to come first democracy or prosperity but in either case they tend to go in the same direction. And good for the environment. Although Singapore is a prosperous city state it lacks freedoms. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose liberal democracy over prosperity.
Posts: 7939 | Location: Santa Barbara | Registered: 19 July 2005
Cool blog-add folks!!! I believe that technology has allowed us to get to this list of what's the worst cities, and how they are bad. Now it's identified!
Education leaders like U.K. and America have suffered, twenty years or more of decline. The recent American Education bill was HUGE, folks. It will mean MORE students, HAPPIER (less encumbered) & FREER students, MORE graduations, DIFFERENT & ECO-FRIENDLY science, technology, and human affairs! Good luck us!!!
p.s. SueN-I hope and pray U.K. will follow with reforms. Their education system has ALWAYS been the pinnacle of the world, and shall remain so.
Posts: 582 | Location: New York City | Registered: 13 February 2007
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