Bicycles in China are not environmentally friendly (5) – Conclusion

Yes, we’ve reached the end at last !

While picking up from where I left off yesterday, am I going to paint a picture of doom and gloom or do I see hope on the horizon for China and the environment ? Well….

Bicycles in China are not environmentally friendly (4) – Globalisation

In this fourth post of the series I am returning to the original subject matter; the pollution being generated by Chinese industry, why it is being allowed to occur and, just as importantly, what the future will hold and why nobody really cares.

What ? Nobody really cares? Well, yes.

Let me explain a little about myself. This is me on that day trip, just having had lunch at a waterfront restaurant within the area. What do you see ?

Relaxing after lunch - near Qinzhou - Dec 2009

You see a tourist; a western tourist. Ok, so effectively China is my second home now because it is Amanda’s home country and the rest of her family is there, but outside of the family unit I am still a “tourist” when I visit.

Despite the destruction and devastation that is being meted out to the local environment, do you see somebody who is up in arms protesting about it ? Of course not. Why not ? Because there is not a single thing that I can do about it.

Bicycles in China are not environmentally friendly (2) – Destruction and pollution

In the last post I discussed the way in which the Chinese love of the bicycle, both pedalled and powered, influences the Chinese authorities when it comes to town planning. They design everything with flat roads.

In this post I will show you what that means to the natural landscape of southern Guangxi.

Bicycles in China are not environmentally friendly (1) – Flat roads

I didn’t know where to start with the reports on my latest trip to China until I saw Kelly’s excellent post the other week on Post-Avatar Depression Support. In that post she links to a Seeking Alpha post entitled Are We Exacerbating China’s Pollution?, which then points the reader at these pictures of industrial pollution in China.

To be fair, the Seeking Alpha post does start with the words “America used to mistreat her land and water like this.”, and one could easily substitute almost any European nation for America in that statement.

This series of posts isn’t aimed at knocking China, (the wife wouldn’t let me). I love China. The intention is simply to relay what I have seen with my own eyes and have learned by my own recent experience, to try to put it into context from the perspective of the world in which we live, and to look to how things might develop and/or improve in the future, if they can.

So where do the bicycles fit into this ?