If the population of the United States was the same size as China, America would be pumping out 22,722,840 kilotons of CO2 emissions – more than twice the carbon dioxide emissions of China. A kiloton is equal to 1,000 tons, and one ton is 2,000 pounds. Do the math. But because the U.S. has about 319 million people to China’s 1.36 billion, China looks worse than the U.S. when the total CO2 emissions are compared: 10,540,000 (kt) versus 5,335,000 (kt) for the U.S.
To me, this is mind boggling. The U.S. calls itself a democracy and many of its citizens never miss a chance to brag about their country’s power and the freedom offered to its citizens. Then why is China, an alleged totalitarian country without much freedom, as critics such as Liu Xiaobo’s claim, allowing Greenpeace to operate there without harassment from China’s central government?
Greenpeace is the leading non-governmental organization working in East Asia to fight climate change. Greenpeace has offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul and is serving the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
And if democracies are so desirable, why did Japan send two Greenpeace activists to jail for one year after exposing widespread corruption in the Japanese government’s Southern Ocean whaling programme?
In fact, in China, efforts to combat climate change demonstrate that China’s government acknowledges the challenge as well as the responsibility of China to tackle them. In addition, if China’s Communist Party didn’t want Greenpeace, they wouldn’t be there.
Listen to Greenpeace China’s Tom Wang in Tianjin calmly being honest about China’s pollution challenges.
In 2006, Greenpeace China was the only NGO to be consulted on an early draft of renewable energy law by China’s National People’s Congress.
Has the US government consulted with Greenpeace? I’ll let Greenpeace answer that question.
China has also allowed two Greenpeace expeditions to China’s Himalayan region in 2006 and 2007 where evidence was discovered of the dramatic retreat of glaciers, which was reported in National Geographic Magazine.
One Greenpeace China campaign focused on stopping Monsanto, a US-headquartered biotechnology giant, from patenting a Chinese indigenous soybean variety. Discover what Monsanto is doing to contaminate the world’s food supply?
How has China reacted to Monsanto GMO soybeans? Sustainable Pulse.com reports, “According to a statement last week by Beijing Food Safety Volunteers the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture has confirmed to them that Monsanto’s RR2 Xtend GMO soybeans have not been approved for import, despite the company’s claims earlier in 2016.”
Greenpeace campaigns in China have also focused on food, agriculture and electronic waste while highlighting the dangers of PVC in children’s toys.
I admit finding this information about Greenpeace China surprised me because all I’ve heard in the Western media of Greenpeace is that they are a gang of dangerous activists doing crazy things to get attention.
Until reading about Greenpeace in China, I didn’t know what a positive force it was for cleaning the environment.
Now I want to know why the US isn’t doing more. But I already know the answer: big oil and the Koch brothers, who fund ALEC, the climate change denial effort, and own many members of the U.S. Congress and state legislature are doing all they can to block ridding our environment of carbon emissions. Source Watch.org lists as many of these bought and paid for elected representatives as possible, because ALEC is cloaked in secrecy, and that is not how a democracy and/or a republic works.
Discover Wu Zetian, China’s only female emperor
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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