Shanghaiist: Trash talk: Do Chinese people care about the environment?

concor1

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:00:17 +0800

the topic is quite a miserable generazation. but i understand..draw attention

Les Izmore

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:53:03 +0800

Man, I just had a slice but you tossed the whole ham up in there!! Sorry for my weak attempt at humour. Wasn't that hippie music pretty good too though? I just cant quite seem to recall. But hey, seriously, talkin' about electing presidents.... the latest generation of Americans gave us G. W. Bush twice. Nobody's perfect.

T

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:15:28 +0800

Sorry, Les, I'm not that old, but even I know your history is wrong. Environmentalism's history line starts with John Muir and the Sierra Club goes through Rachel Carson/Silent Spring . . . and legislation like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act had scant to do with the hippies. To give credit for the Civil Rights Movement (which pre-dated the hippies) and the Environmental Movement (also pre-dated the hippies) to a bunch of over-privileged pseudo rebels minimizes the contributions of who really was important to those movements. The only positive hippies ever gave us was getting the US out of Vietnam, but that's pretty much equalized by the permissive free love and drug society they gave rise to in the 70s which resulted in the fucked up era of my childhood. If the hippies were powerful enough to end racism and start the environmental movement, why weren't they powerful enough to stop Nixon or Reagan from getting elected? Hippies = most overrated protesters in history.

HowieW928

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:31:01 +0800

hahahahhahaha, now I know you're joking. Thanks for humouring me, it's almost cute.

nanheyangrouchuan

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:23:13 +0800

The urban bosses in China didn't "discover" a new world with 50 million Tibetan inhabitants, slaughter them, take their land and pollute it. That's exactly what happened almost 60 years ago. Bad, bad China.

HowieW928

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:40:10 +0800

I got it, but it's stupid. The urban bosses in China didn't "discover" a new world with 50 million Tibetan inhabitants, slaughter them, take their land and pollute it. So why would Tibetans be shedding that tear? It makes no sense.

Les Izmore

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:28:52 +0800

Not to excuse anyone for throwing trash out the window but most of you are probably too young to remember when it was common practice in the USA. When I was a kid in the fifties people did it all the time. California's answer was to make littering a crime punishable by a $250 fine and post big signs along all the highways. That was lots of money way back then. The change toward protecting the environment came along with all the other things that happened in the 60s, i.e. racism isn't cool, war might not solve all political problems, water pollution that causes cancer in children is a bad thing, rampant consumerism is unsustainable, there is only one planet and polluting one part of it is bad for everyone, etc. etc. Just more good ideas we should thank those dirty hippies for. Where will the Chinese hippies come from?

nanheyangrouchuan

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:18:02 +0800

What do you mean by "Wow!"???????????? What China needs is a PR campaign showing urban bosses littering and freely peeing then cut to a picture of a Tibetan or Uyghur peasant shedding a tear (only Americans will get this).

Neocha

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:47:06 +0800

It may only be a small example of a few, young Chinese designers speaking out for the environment, but I've found an inspirational anecdote or two in China. A group called “Unigreen” has made an open offer online to hand-stitch a free chopstick / soup spoon holder for anyone who pledges to only carry reusable chopsticks. Here's the event page: http://www.neocha.com/group/environmentalists/event!847.html I think grassroots initiatives like this from the younger, more environmentally aware generation in China may signal a small but meaningful shift in thinking away from China’s current consumption habits.

Alec

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:09:32 +0800

This article is talking about the bigger environmental picture, but the greatest indicator to me of the Chinese attitude towards the environment is at the local level. How many times have I seen a Mercedes or Audi roll down their window and toss copious amounts of trash onto the street? How many small towns have I visited where everyone simply throws trash out their window and it collects in disgusting mini-mountains? Or the Canadian tour guide in Tibet who was incensed that the Chinese tour groups would go to a gorgeous unspoiled area and leave it littered with trash? Pathetic.

T

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:53:54 +0800

Wow, a reasonable comment from lamb skewer. I happen to agree with him. THe other thing I'd mention is that it's not a lack of caring, it's a lack of education about consequences and causes. Everyone complains about the air and pollution and dirtyness, but very few see their own role in causing this. We may think it's readily apparent, but that's because we were raised in a "Don't Pollute/Don't throw trash in the street/Don't dump oil down the storm drain" sort of society. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I have to add nobody in China could care less about it - WHAT? Nobody in China could care less about it? That's some tortured English. I know he's trying to say "nobody in China cares about the environment" but that's just terrible.

nanheyangrouchuan

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:21:44 +0800

More people probably would care but some in authority tell everyone that this is a normal stage in economic development and that the US and Europe were just as polluted 100 years ago (not true, many of today's pollutants only existed on chalkboards back then), much of the world's pollution is caused solely by the US and Europe (again, false, probably half at most) and lastly that the US and European gov'ts sent heavy industry to China to clean their own environment (biggest lie of all, MNCs went to China on their own to avoid labor and enviro regs).