The China Syndrome

Researchers in California, Oregon and Washington noticed specks of sulfur compounds, carbon and other byproducts of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces of their mountaintop detectors. These microscopic particles can work their way deep into the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer., says the New York Times. Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of CA at Davis.

Where is this pollution coming from? Not LA, not this time. It's from China.

Byproducts of coal burning cause even more serious health problems in China itself, and beyond toxicity the exports include adding mightily to global heating. China released about 22.5 million tons of sulfur in 2004, more than twice the amount released in the United States, and a Chinese regulator publicly estimated last autumn that emissions would reach 26 million tons for 2005, although no official figures have been released yet. Acid rain now falls on 30 percent of China.

Still the direct effect on this part of the US is increasing. Unless Chinese regulators become much more aggressive over the next few years, considerably more emissions could reach the United States. Chinese pollution is already starting to make it harder and more expensive for West Coast cities to meet stringent air quality standards, said Professor Cliff of the University of California, slowing four decades of progress toward cleaner air.

China is still growing in terms of energy use, and India is not far behind. The scope of the problem is immense. And another insidious effect: the coal smoke is blocking sunlight, masking the effects of global heating, but only temporarily. So if China cuts emissions, the Climate Crisis will get worse, before it gets better. But the emissions continue, things might not look as bad as they are, until they get much worse. It's almost a classic example of a phenomenon someone told me years ago is a feature of complex systems, revealed by computer models in systems dynamics.

What else does it tell us? If we're going to cope with the Climate Crisis, we will need to get smarter faster, and absorb ways of thinking, like this one, revealed by systems dynamics, chaos theory, etc. As well as rediscovering the wisdoms of our species, obscured by five thousand years of authoritarian mind and soul management, with its attendant necessity of making us smarter slaves but more ignorant beings, and an ignorant thinking species.

What else does it tell us? We're all in this together.