korea!

I've been in Korea for about a week now. I'm keeping my eye out on what they import here.
Also, it's been almost impossible to not eat meat since almost every meal consists of a meat dish. we are eating way too well here.

follow us here:

two weeks in our mothers' land

oops.

i apologize for the absence, but honestly, nothing too interesting has happened that i haven't already written about my year without China and Meat.

actually, i have a confession. the coffee table and side table i purchased from ikea were made in China. although i would love to decorate my new place with pictures placed in nice picture frames, i can't since the frames are made in China.

i hate my mind set on this at the moment. all i can think is, "when January rolls around, i can't wait to buy (fill in the blank)." One of the purposes of forgoing China made goods (and food) was to show myself that i really don't need what i think i need. sure, decorating the apt with pictures would be nice, but is it necessary?

i'm realizing this with shoes. strange i know, but shoes are the one thing that i have the hardest time finding. my wide feet are not ideal for most shoes, so if i come across a good pair of shoes that fit, i usually buy. however, i am surviving quite nicely with the shoes i already own. my converse are not in tip top shape, but the poor babies are holding up for me.

one other bit of news....

I will begin incorporating MEAT into my diet...slowly...beginning in July. Why? well, i am going to Korea in August (with dan, dan lee, charlie, and esther!) to help out at dan's uncle's church. it would be pretty rude to request a vegetarian meal just for me...and plus, i'm staying an extra week with my grandparents and my mom said, "if they make you a meal with meat, don't you dare tell them you can't eat it because you don't eat meat." (i would never have done that by the way.)

so...i'm going to start eating meat. i'm a bit scared of gaining weight though. i can't gain weight. why? my sister's engaged! meaning...working out and eating well for the next 6 months. yay.

ok...that's it for now. i wish i had more interesting things to say right now, but i can't. i will leave you with a picture of those of us going to korea though! : )

don't you love our family portrait?

more on China

China 'unfairly seen as eco-villain'

VIEWPOINT
William Bleisch

China's rapid economic expansion in recent years has been matched by its increasingly voracious appetite for energy and natural resources, says William Bleisch. But, as he explains in this week's Green Room, the nation has sometimes been unfairly portrayed as the world's biggest environmental villain.

“ China has also made dramatic strides in protecting the best examples of natural habitats in nature reserves and other protected areas ”

As early as 1995, Lester Brown, one of the world's leading environmentalists, predicted that China's increasing demand for food and other commodities would soon drive world prices to record highs.

If the figures were alarming then, they have only grown more so as China's prosperity has increased its global reach and purchasing power.

Cries of alarm have come from more and more people, as China's demand for everything from oil to hardwood timber has been blamed for global price rises.

The increasing affluence of Chinese consumers and their new-found ability to travel the world means that far more of them have the opportunity and the means to purchase tiger skins, ivory and rhinoceros horn.

And as the nation's energy and mining industries have ventured beyond the nation's borders, they have turned out to be every bit as rapacious and unethical as western companies can be; perhaps more so, since they do not have to answer to an open press and domestic outrage.

Growing appetite

The impacts of China's affluence are being felt downstream as well, in the form of greenhouse gases emissions.

CO2 emissions from China are increasing faster than from any other country in the world.

In 1990, it already accounted for some 10.5% of the world's CO2 emissions. Now, according to some analyses, China has become the world's largest emitter of climate-altering gases.

The backlash has been predictable. China's exemption from caps on greenhouse gas emissions was one of the major reasons why the US Senate unanimously rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

It was a powerful justification for the Bush administration's stance on Kyoto.

The politicians believed that US efforts would be pointless if China's emissions continued to grow.

But are the criticisms entirely fair? First, markets and emissions must be considered relative to China's enormous population and fairly recent emergence as a newly industrialised nation.

China's population of 1.3 billion is about four times larger than that of the US, but each Chinese citizen uses about 25% of the energy consumed by his or her US counterpart.

Even that measure is skewed, because much of that energy used in China is to manufacture goods that are then purchased by Americans, Europeans and Japanese.

The current rates of emissions also hide the fact that the industrialised western nations (including Japan) have been belching out CO2 far longer than China, which only reached newly industrialised status in the 1990s.

Exotic tastes

China certainly deserves criticism for its impacts on other areas of the environment.

Chinese consumers have a large and growing appetite for exotic medicines that has directly led to dozens of species in China and throughout the world becoming endangered.

Its citizens are still responsible for consumption of staggering amounts of wildlife and threatened timber products, some illegally smuggled from as far away as Indonesia and Zimbabwe.

In 2008, several US states moved to ban turtle trapping on public lands, and 12 more US turtle species have been proposed for the endangered species list - all because of the impact of trade to China.

“ Illegal wildlife products have largely disappeared from shops and markets in much of China, as enforcement of wildlife laws has become clearer and more effective ”

But even with regard to trade in wildlife, the story is hardly as simple as it is often portrayed.

China signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and put it into force in 1981, passing legislation soon after to back up the treaty.

In many areas, the government has made dramatic strides in controlling wildlife trade over the past 20 years, even as demand has sky-rocketed due to consumers' new affluence.

Illegal wildlife products have largely disappeared from shops and markets in much of China, as enforcement of wildlife laws has become clearer and more effective.

Gone are the days when tiger bone wine could be openly advertised, and monkeys and wild caught parrots were openly sold in markets.

The tiger brand plasters found in every Chinese pharmacy contain no tiger, and the tiger and leopard skins sold to foolish westerners at many tourist traps are actually just poorly dyed dog skins.

Chinese consumers seeking to stock up on threatened wildlife must now travel to neighbouring countries, where unscrupulous local dealers still feel safe offering them a multitude of products, both fake and real.

China has also made dramatic strides in protecting the best examples of natural habitats in nature reserves and other protected areas.

More than 15% of the nation's land area is legally protected in thousands of nature reserves and national parks, and most national reserves now have full-time staff that carry out regular patrols.

The proposal and approval of the enormous Giant Panda Sanctuary World Heritage Natural Site in the Sichuan Qionglai Mountains is just one of the most recent examples of China's political will and dedication to protecting world natural heritage.

This is essential, since the rapid pace of development means that natural ecosystems outside protected areas are under increasing threat from the relentless search for more land and resources.

Controlling the breakneck development has proved to be difficult or impossible for many regions, but a new law on Environmental Impact Assessments, which became effective in September 2003, has been praised as a model of good legislation.

It includes provisions to increase protection for critical habitats and protected areas. There is still a major gap between policy and implementation, but it may not be long before the "Three Simultaneous Commencements" (the start of permit application, the start of the environmental impact assessment and the start of digging) becomes a thing of the past, at least in the country's more progressive regions.

Team effort

China has made impressive efforts to rise to standards set by the international community, but the efforts have not always been good enough to stem the tide in the face of massive and growing pressures.

It can be argued that none of this will mean much if China's greenhouse gas emissions cause climate disasters to habitats and species throughout the world.

But here too, China has responded to global needs.

It signed the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1998 and ratified the Protocol in 2002, something that the US failed to do.

More importantly, it made emissions reduction a national policy in 2005, when the nation's 11th Five-Year Plan (for 2006 to 2010) set a target of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20%.

The EU gave itself a similar target, but has until 2020 to achieve it; US plans are less ambitious still.

Given the pattern of exaggeration and over-statement often seen in the international press, it is little wonder that strident international criticism just seems to be dismissed as sour grapes by most people in China.

Is it time, as many Chinese critics argue, for westerners to back off and tend to their own houses?

Perhaps. But isn't it the responsibility of all, both producer nations and consumer nations, to work together to solve problems such as depletion of ocean fisheries and over-exploitation of threatened species?

We might hope that at least global climate change is so much of a clear and present danger that, for once, countries could put aside their differences and act together to find a workable solution, perhaps based on the seemingly fair standard of a "climate change allocation" for each person on the planet.

China should respond to critics by providing clear answers detailing what is being done to solve real problems. And that is not "China-bashing"; the same could be said of every fully industrialised nation.

Global problems demand global accountability; and that creates a responsibility of each of us to point out when policy and implementation are failing, and to help each nation rise to the needs.

Dr William Bleisch is science director of the China Exploration & Research Society

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Story from BBC NEWS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8100988.st

Published: 2009/06/16 08:46:32 GMT

© BBC MMIX

lemons.

i haven't blogged in a while. maybe it's because i feel guilty because i bought some furniture for my apt that were made in China. but hey...it was Swedish designed...

random fact: lemons originated in China.

i have much to blog about. but I will leave you with that for now.

sigh.

My dad asked me to buy him an external hardrive yesterday. It was a Toshiba 400GB, on sale at Frys for $89.99. I thought, "hmm... Toshiba, that's Japanese. This should be okay."

It's made all over the place! The parts came from China, Philippines, and one other place. But it was assembled together in China.

My first China made purchase of the year.

a craving not satisfied.

It had been a while since I ate Ddukbokki. I drove on over to the Korean market to buy the ingredients.

dduk- check

fish cakes- check

onions- check

red chili paste- ch...

red pepper flakes- che....

red chili paste and red pepper flakes were imported from none other than China. Each brand, whether it came from somewhere in the States or imported from Korea, it had been first brought in from China.

So, I ventured into the fish aisle to buy some fish instead. I checked the label on the package fish... Imported from P.R.O.C.

What is P.R.O.C.? People's Republic of China.

How cleverly they tried to disguise the name of the import...

A Green China?

Can China be green by 2020?

By Rogerio Wassermann 
BBC Brasil, Beijing 

China's unprecedented economic growth over the past 30 years has come at a huge cost to the environment.

The damage has not only been to the air the Chinese breath or the water in their rivers, but also to its reputation across the world.

But there are signs that China may now be serious about tackling pollution to prove to the world that it can develop while causing less damage to the environment.

BBC Brasil travelled to China, which recently overtook the United States as the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, as part of its series looking at where the BRIC economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China - will be in 2020.

China is today the world's biggest consumer of coal, the cheapest yet most polluting source of energy.

The country uses a quarter of the world's coal reserves and depends on it to provide more than two thirds of its energy needs.

The rapid growth has also altered old Chinese habits that used to be environmentally friendly.

As soon as you walk out from your hotel onto the street of Beijing you realise that the typical image of Chinese city streets being packed with bicycle-riding commuters is becoming a thing of the past.

How pollution affects China

 20 of the 30 most polluted cities in the world are in China

 400,000 people die of pollution related diseases each year

 One third of Chinese territory is affected by acid rain

Bumper to bumper, the people of Beijing crawl to work in their cars. Each car belching out fumes into the atmosphere.

In Beijing alone, the number of cars has tripled over the past decade, with more than 1,000 new vehicles arriving on the streets of the capital every day.

In discussions for the post-Kyoto global climate treaty, China now accepts the need for mandatory targets to reduce greenhouse gasses, but with the condition that stricter rules should be applied to developed countries.

"China is no longer a closed country," says Tom Wang, spokesman for Greenpeace in Beijing.

"To keep its economic growth and its place as an important player on the international scene, it needs to acknowledge what other countries are saying about it."

According to Mr Want, environmental damage costs the country up to 5% of its economic output each year.

Chinese victims

The biggest victims of the pollution are the Chinese themselves.

“ I have a constant inexplicable cough ” 
Beijing resident

One woman in Beijing complained about the low cloud that floats above the city centre.

A man complained about a "constant inexplicable cough".

According to the World Bank, of the 30 most polluted cities in the world, 20 are in China.

Each year more than 400,000 people die of pollution-related illnesses.

But when BBC Brasil visited Wang Xiaoming of Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau, the mood was upbeat.

To get to the main office you walk over a glass floor under which is a model of the city showing where its monitoring points are.

Mr Wang's office is full of computer screens being studied by technicians.

He points proudly at one of the screens, which shows that pollution in the city is better than the level considered to be safe by the World Health Organisation.

And that's not all. Mr Wang says the trend for pollution has been down in the city for some time.

According to Mr Wang, last year Beijing had 274 of what are called "blue sky days", which is when the pollution level is under the maximum level considered acceptable by the WHO. In 2007, they had 246 days of blue sky days while in 1998 they only had 100.

Acid rain

But it is not only air quality that is a matter of concern.

Many of the country's rivers are polluted with heavy metals, spoiling the water used for irrigation and contaminating the food chain.

Around a third of the Chinese territory is affected by the acid rain caused by pollution. The rain has a direct impact on the country's food production.

The Chinese government has started to act on these issues, mainly because environmental damage poses a threat to the economic growth of the country.

Last year the Beijing Olympics served as a platform for the Chinese government to show the world that it cares about the environment.

All of the buildings designed for the Games had 'green' features such as solar power and systems for collecting rain water.

In addition, restrictions were set to limit emissions from polluting industries, and a rota-based system was put in place to reduce by half the amount of cars on the streets of Beijing.

These measures achieved what had seemed impossible: blue skies during the two weeks of the Games.

The measures adopted during the Olympics, although limited in their reach, proved the country is capable of fighting against its environmental problems if there is political will.

“ China is one of a few countries in the world that have been rapidly increasing their forest cover ” 
David Dollar

For David Dollar, director of the World Bank in China, the country has achieved some progress in this area, although it still faces serious problems.

"If we had had this conversation a year ago, I would have said that environmental issues were the greatest challenge faced by China and the biggest threat to the country's growth in the long term," says Dollar.

"However, what is little known is that there has been a great deal of progress on the environmental front in the last ten years. China is one of a few countries in the world that have been rapidly increasing their forest cover. It is managing to reduce air and water pollution," says Dollar.

If China can develop alternative energy sources and reduce emissions, the country might in 2020 be an example of how economic development and environmental protection can work together.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/7972125.stm

Published: 2009/04/02 22:33:21 GMT

© BBC MMIX