People Power: Chinese Standing Up To Growing Pollution

[Igel]

3. Don't.

This is a normal kind of thing. As incomes grow up, quality of life issues loom larger. People are willing to trade off some increased income for increased QoL.

This happened in the US in the late '50s and early '60s, accelerating as it went. Plants were cleaning up their act, and many of the worst problems were being worked on already. As with most important things, the legislation rode the movement for change. Even by the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire, sort of a landmark event, the photos they ran of "the fire" were actually of one of the bad ones in the 1950s (common knowledge now, but even when I was in school we were still told it was the actual '69 fire that we were seeing pictures of--thanks, Time Magazine). That kind of fire probably couldn't have happened on the Cuyahoga in '69.

Let the Chinese change their own society. They'll be better off for it in all but the very short run, and maybe even then--what you don't want to do is have the Chinese government think it's being forced to do something by outsiders.