By Steven Neff
Over the years, the amount of pollution on the planet has continued to increase, causing many health problems for people living in those polluted areas and for the planet. Many countries around the world face sustainability issues, some being more detrimental to the planet than others. Currently China is one of the biggest contributors to the excessive amounts of pollution on the Earth. The country produces the most amount of carbon dioxide per year and has a severe water crisis. China also faces problems with soil pollution and desertification.
China, as of 2018, is the leading country with the most CO2 emissions. That year alone China produced 10.06 billion metric tons of CO2. This is an extremely large issue because the excessive amounts of carbon dioxide can contribute to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is when more thermal energy builds up in the atmosphere and can lead to the natural temperature of the planet to rise. This is a main cause of global warming. Global warming has been known to be a major dilemma for the future of the planet, and for the future of humanity. It has been causing the polar ice caps to start melting into the ocean, which can lead to sea levels rising a couple meters. Melting ice caps also release a lot of stored carbon dioxide and methane, which further worsen the effects of global warming.
China’s pollution laws are very lax when it comes to factories and where they release their waste because the country relies more on meeting the demands of buyers of cheap goods; therefore, the factories will keep operating without restrictions. The air quality is also extremely problematic. The country focuses more on economic growth because many people were lifted out of poverty, but as a cost the quality of the environment plummeted. Most of China’s growth was powered by coal, which was cheap and easy to source, but it polluted the air a lot. Rural homes even used coal to warm their homes. The intense smog in Beijing comes from an abundance of coal-powered factories, south of the city, and due to the mountains to the north and west of the city, the factories’ emissions stay trapped in Beijing.
China has also been experiencing a sever scarcity of water, primarily in the northern area if the country. This scarcity is mainly caused by insufficient local water resources and lack of access to clean water. Clean water is less available due to the increased amount of pollution and it has a detrimental impact on the environment and society. Water pollution is China’s worst environmental issue, and it stems from the mass dumping of toxic human waste and industrial waste. The surfaces of the lakes turn green due to an increase in algae growing that are caused by the pollution. The ground water found in 90 percent of the cities in China is also contaminated. China’s water pollution doubled from what their government predicted it would be at because of the neglect of agricultural waste. Most of that waste was farm fertilizer. It has been revealed that China’s water sources contain a toxic amount of arsenic, fluorine, and sulfates, which have been linked to be the cause of an increase various diseases. China has poor environmental regulations, especially for factories. Factories are allowed to dump waste into rivers and lakes, and as a result, small nearby villages that rely on that contaminated water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning face significantly higher rates of cancer and death.
Another major hazard that China faces is soil pollution. In 2014 a survey showed that nearly one fifth of the farmland was contaminated with chemical waste, heavy metals, mining residues, and pesticides. Farms in the Hunan Province grow poisoned crops due to the smoke released from the nearby smelting factories. The smoke contains cadmium, which is released when smelting iron, lead, and copper ores. Since it is a heavy metal, the liver and kidneys cannot remove it from the body if it is ingested, so it can accumulate and cause bone diseases and, sometimes, cancer. Pesticides also contaminate the soil and crops and can have a severe impact on a person’s health. Livestock on these farms also become contaminated with chemicals and then are killed and sold to the public for consumption. This allows for disease to spread a lot easier from rural areas or more suburban/urban areas. Efforts of reducing the amount of land pollution consisted of trading away ownership of that polluted land, which meant the government was not motivated to properly fix their issue of pollution.
The country also lost about a quarter if its land to desertification. Desertification is the process where biological life in an area is lost due to either natural processes or human activities, in which the land becomes more uninhabitable and desert-like. This can destroy farmland and bury small villages, which forces people to leave their homes. The areas hit by desertification become more arid due to the massive increase in pollution through the air and soil. Along with the scarcity if water, the land remains dry and can no longer sustain life.
Overpopulation has provided to be a issue also. More people mean that factories have to stay open to have more jobs and produce more goods to meet the demand of the people, which in turn causes more pollution to the air. Since clean water is scarce, contaminated water is supplied to the public, causing more people to contract diseases. Diseases will be able to spread much easier because of the overcrowding in the country. As the population continues to grow, it also indicates that there are more people to produce waste to harm the environment.
As previously stated, China favors the growth of its economy more than the wellbeing of the people and the environment. In conclusion, China is one of the leading causes as to why the planet is in its current state of crisis, due to its excessive CO2 emissions, water scarcity and pollution, and soil pollution.
Works Cited
“Is Air Quality in China a Social Problem?” ChinaPower Project, 26 Aug. 2020, chinapower.csis.org/air-quality/.
“The Most Neglected Threat to Public Health in China Is Toxic Soil.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, 8 June 2017, www.economist.com/briefing/2017/06/08/the-most-neglected-threat-to-public-health-in-china-is-toxic-soil.
Borgen, Clint. “Water Pollution in China Is the Country's Worst Environmental Issue.” The Borgen Project, Clint Borgen Https://Borgenproject.org/Wp-Content/Uploads/The_Borgen_Project_Logo_small.Jpg, 16 Dec. 2019, borgenproject.org/water-pollution-in-china/.
Jiang, Yong. “China's Water Scarcity.” Journal of Environmental Management, Academic Press, 17 June 2009, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479709001339.
Kan, Haidong. “Environment and Health in China: Challenges and Opportunities.” Environmental Health Perspectives, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Dec. 2009, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799473/.
Stanway, David. “China Soil Pollution Efforts Stymied by Local Governments: Greenpeace.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 17 Apr. 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-soil/china-soil-pollution-efforts-stymied-by-local-governments-greenpeace-idUSKCN1RT04D.
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