www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

Chen Weihua

Reflecting on Earth Day for the nation

By Chen Weihua (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-20 07:38
Large Medium Small

If China needs to import more to balance its foreign trade, oil, raw materials, jumbo jets and luxury sedans should never dominate its shopping list.

Instead, it should consider clean air, water and soil first.

That is what I feel strongly about, after traveling at home and abroad.

The above resources are in severe shortage in China now, and more so every passing day.

It seems unnecessary to cite scary figures to remind 1.3 billion compatriots of the scarcity of clean air, water and soil. Those who do not feel that there is such a crisis have simply been numbed for too long, by gulping polluted water, choking on foul air and eating food grown on tainted farmland.

News media have been devoting enormous space and airtime to cover earthquakes, coal mine explosions and air crashes. Yet, the most underreported breaking news in China in the past decades are those on the environmental crisis.

About half of the waterways in China are severely polluted and hundreds of millions of rural Chinese residents have no access to safe drinking water. Water pollution has been blamed for partly causing the country's high death rates of liver and stomach cancers.

On the other hand, more than half of 600 major cities are suffering water shortages. Drought, which devastated Southwest China in the past months, has been occurring more often. Desertification, which already makes up 20 percent of Chinese territory, is advancing fast. In the 1990s alone, some 10,400 square kilometers of desert, about two-thirds the size of Beijing, were added onto China's map. It is no longer considered paranoid to talk about Beijing being encroached upon by desert in the next decades, if we continue to turn a blind eye to the issue.

Despite China's environmental efforts, pollution is still serious. Many urban Chinese residents living under hazy skies have forgotten what a blue one feels like. According to an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report, air pollution will afflict 20 million Chinese people each year with respiratory diseases. The country's blood-lead levels, which can cause brain damage, have hit twice the world's average.

All these are just a fraction of the grave environmental challenges the nation is facing. While we pride ourselves on the economic miracle we created in the last 30 years, we have also been destroying nature in unprecedented speed and scale.

As Chinese people become wealthier, they are able to dine out and travel more often. They also become increasingly worried about the air they breathe, the food they eat and the water they drink.

The skyrocketing property prices, economic recovery and the Shanghai Expo are now in the media spotlight. But these are simply infinitesimal compared with the air, water and soil pollution that kill and sicken people by the tens of millions every year.

It will be a worthwhile cause if we can redeem ourselves and clean our air, water and soil by investing an amount equivalent to two years or even 10 years of the country's GDP.

It is much more important to leave our future generations with a clean land than stacks of money and a few houses that many Chinese people are planning to buy at the moment.

Our generation should not be remembered for turning beautiful, natural landscapes into uninhabitable areas.

Earth Day, which falls on April 22 this year, should not be a one-day affair. It should become an Earth Year 2010 and an Earth Century 21.

E-mail: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/20/2010 page8)

主站蜘蛛池模板: 普通话对白国产情侣自啪 | 万全影院亚洲影院理论片 | 国产精品1区 2区 3区 | 三级视频网站在线观看 | 欧美精品1| 成人老司机深夜福利久久 | 久久久久99精品成人片三人毛片 | 一级在线观看视频 | 九色91 | 日韩欧美国产另类 | 99ri在线视频 | 日本成本人视频 | 久久久网站亚洲第一 | 精品区 | 国产成人福利免费观看 | 成年人免费的视频 | 九色福利| 在线观看精品视频网站www | 亚洲伦| 国产做a爰片久久毛片 | 一级国产 | 久草免费福利 | 一级成人黄色片 | 欧美一级α片毛片免费观看 | 色综合精品久久久久久久 | 97影院理论在线观看 | 久久最新视频 | 小泽玛利亚的一级毛片的 | 香港三级做爰大爽视频 | 日韩欧美一区二区久久 | 日韩在线二区全免费 | 国产精品久久久久久久网站 | 亚洲欧美在线综合一区二区三区 | 国内精品91最新在线观看 | 日本毛片在线看 | 亚洲精品国产福利 | 99久久综合精品国产 | 一级毛片在线看 | 久久国产亚洲精品 | 三级黄色在线播放 | 亚洲一区二区天海翼 |