Illegal Production and Use of Banned CFC-11 in China's Foam Blowing Industry
eia-global.org
eia-global.org
Like every time a vehicle in front of me releasing thick black smoke from tailpipe, I feel like it must be required by law for them to channel some of the smoke to go inside their own vehicle, so they know, "Oh, apparently it doesn't smell nice and it can kill me, I should send my car to workshop so I don't hurt others."
Smokers already feel this. In many buildings, when they want to smoke, they must go to some room with other smokers. Although, I still don't understand why they still keep smoking. At least, they can only hurt themselves.
Completely unrelated to this case, which is just about old fashioned profit over the common good.
They are already the product of their environment.
Coal rollers in the USA, on the other hand, have no excuse.
- cracking down dissidents (no election - no real 'authority', officials don't have any incentives to listen to "the people"^TM)
- handling local politics (again, no election - same PRC ppl)
- deporting N.Korean refugees back to N.Korea (continuing just because Chinas has been doing so - just like PRC praising Mao for Cultural Revolution that killed millions)
without elections, why would a gov. official listen to "the people"?
and speaking of dissidents, why would Chinese police operate "execution vans"? isn't that to hide execution of key people, whose news of execution may stir the public?
If the effect of this pollution is that China's competitors have to spend more energy and resources combatting the ozone hole then it's a competitive advantage with the only downside being loss of international reputation.
Point is, the pollution China's been cracking down on is the type that hurts the country economically (whether through immediate health issues or making it less desirable to live). Will be interesting to see how they respond.
While this report may be the first smoking gun, there have been very, very strong implications of cheating in China on CFCs for years. If they wanted to rein it in, they could have done it long ago.
But the same could be said for any hyper capitalistic society without rule of law or strong regulatory enforcement. That just happens to mainly be China right now, but could also be the USA in the future if the EPA is dismantled and Trumpism reigns.
If the oceans rise 2 meters half of their coastal citys are in for severe flooding.
They don't. It's already illegal there.
Factories creating that gas are doing so in secret and are unregistered.
Licensed factories secretly using that gas appear to be good at evading the discovery of that fact by authorities, partly due to corrupt inspectors.
It's mentioned in the video in the linked article.
The only positive is where ever they use it as insulation, will reduce energy needs to heat or cool the structure.
> The reason of banning was said to be the pressure of public perception of smog and the fear of collective action of the people
it's not 'inability to regulate', but reluctant to regulate. Just make those environmental groups shut up.
It seems to me like there is laws against this, there are inspectors, but local corruption and small fines is making it ineffective.
Of the numbers at the end of the article are just somewhat correct, we're talking about maybe 10 factories (give or take). So this is certainly something that can be fixed.
At it's so far clear that the government is not condoning this behavior.
Not entirely sure about this, time and time again there seems to be a disconnect between what China says and what China does.
>So the government has good reason to actually enforce environmental laws; they’re just too big to do it effectively.
When they want to, they are capable of blocking the entire internet, monitoring all residents, manipulating global raw materials. Why else run a dictatorship?
Chinese people aren't some mindless propagandized drones. They have the same capacity of looking out the window as you or I.
The people making the foam 100% know it's illegal (as they demonstrated) and why it's illegal - yet they still do it. The money is more important to them than the ethics.
Besides, if the Chinese government and the Chinese people didn't think differently, all of this censoring and covering up wouldn't be needed.
This is a problem in every country. There's nothing unique about China in that respect. Unethical people will tend behave unethically when money is on the line.
Maybe the cover-ups are done in order to save face, or because some particular agent in the department responsible is getting kickbacks. The CCP as a whole does benefits from the first, not the second.
Efforts to enforce regulations on CFC gasses need to work all the time. Efforts to censor the internet only needs to work most the of the time.
The tolerance for failure is different.
It's not just that, higher government in China have caused the situation - they without doubt hold much of the burden for this. There are multiple angles as for why:
* One of the Chinese Communist Party's main points confirming how amazing their party is (and therefore why it shouldn't be challenged) is the amount it's been able to grow the economy. This has created a national sentiment of "growth at all costs".
* Setting high economic growth goals on local officials means they need to cut corners to get there - including lying about how much money they really made and ignoring laws in favour of growth. The consequence to this is often human lives and environmental damage.
* Preventing the average person from investing in anything other than cheap buildings means that China's housing market has ballooned out of control. (Those who have been able to sneak money outside of China usually also invest in housing.) Building companies therefore want to widen their margins as much as possible whilst competing for investment from locals.
* Trying to maintain a positive image for the Chinese Communist Party means squashing any scandals caused by officials and censoring public discussion/outrage on sensitive issues, such as health and environmental damage. (This doesn't always work, feeding babies cement instead of milk powder was a "little" too far.)
>Of the numbers at the end of the article are just somewhat correct, we're talking about maybe 10 factories (give or take). So this is certainly something that can be fixed.
That's so far and in just one industry. It's also possible other industries are also using CFC-11 but are yet to be discovered.
>At it's so far clear that the government is not condoning this behavior.
1 billion+ people and mass monitoring, I'm pretty sure somebody was aware of this in high level government. By not saying anything, they are effectively condoning it.
Actually, I wouldn't trust the Chinese government to make the formal investigation - they had their chance years ago and did nothing. If we were serious about this, the investigators would be an international team (including Chinese people) and the repercussions would be massive. One "benefit" to it being a dictatorship is that they can arbitrarily set the consequences of these actions and set an example.
Of course this won't actually happen, foreign Countries wouldn't want to risk bad relations with China and the Chinese government wouldn't actually benefit from punishing a large part of their crucial industry who were effectively acting on their orders. They only need to be seen doing the "right" thing.
If it's really is just a handful of factories, the cost of doing the right thing isn't particularly high. It might just be easier than working hard to fake it :)
My point is that there is room for hope here.
> “When the municipal environmental bureau runs a check, our local officers would call me and tell me to shut down my factory. Our workers just gather and hide together.”
So at-least they know it wrong, and inspectors are at-least pretending to do inspections. Maybe outside pressure will bring an end to with is likely local corruption.
[1] http://www.euronews.com/2017/10/13/environmental-satellite-r...
China also produces radioactive sludge from rare earth mines and grows world trade food crops not even 1/2 mile away.
Photos https://imgur.com/a/lsVb6X0
When you constantly pollute at the cost of everyone's health your culture is literally toxic. As a Chinese-American I'm sad to say I'm disgusted by the "worlds oldest civilization."
https://player.vimeo.com/video/278835579
It says the government shutdown the factory due to environmental crackdown.
Jump to video 1:45