With all the lefty panic and the liberal frenzy over the environment, sometimes it is helpful to put it all in perspective.

Via the NYT:

[J]ust as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

The article is very long, but worth reading. And no, my point is not that we don’t need to pay attention to our own polluting and wastefulness simply because China is doing worse than we are, but rather that we don’t need to pretend that the US is the only big bad guy on the block. All of those environmental loudmouths, like Algore and DiCaprio, need to be jumping on China as much as they need to be doing anything else. And under no circumstances should the US, or any other country, bind itself to environmental treaties that will hurt the economy without getting countries like China and India on board first.

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