I’ve been slowly working through a backlog of post ideas and the title of this one jumped out at me. The draft contained a link to a Guardian story about the pollution problems facing China and how the government is trying to promote a “struggle” against polluters (with all the historical baggage that word carries).
Interesting reading on its own but it seemed particularly relevant as I’m just finishing Jared Diamond’s Collapse on the environmental woes of past and present societies, including China. The importance of environmental attitudes features prominently in Diamond’s analysis and he summarizes the Chinese situation nicely:
China’s leader used to believe that humans can and should conquer Nature, that environmental damage was a problem affecting only capitalist societies, and that socialist societies were immune to it. Now, facing overwhelming signs of China’s own severe environmental problems, they know better.
