Where the jobs go

by Sibyl West

 

“With money, a dragon. Without money, a worm.” 

 - Chinese aphorism

 

 

This is a picture of Hong Kong from the week of  October 18 – 24, 2009. It could have been taken eleven years ago when I was working there. That’s when I wrote this: 

Summertime  August 6, 1998      

A thick, gray coat of sticky dirt covers the leaves of my houseplants, clogs my air conditioner, making it rattle like a freight train. What is this ubiquitous filth that covers everything? Greed, I say. Diesel fumes, the emblem of cheap power — Who cares about the peons dragging themselves along the streets outside your Mercedes? You can always fly to Bali and recover or stay in London or Paris – the ‘civilized world’ — for awhile.

But nobody likes to return to the salt mine; the biohazard we are pleased to call the “Fragrant Harbor.”  Is it going to take some Cantonese fisherman landing a three eyed fish, or restaurant customers remarking about how their grilled sole has a greenish glow in the dark before we get it?

Ten years later, nothing has changed. Watch this video. The narrator sounds like she is suffering from respiratory problems herself!

Oct 24, 2009

Reuters: Hong Kong air pollution has equaled a record high registered in 2000, triggering a warning for people with heart or respiratory illnesses, according to the Environmental Protection Department.

The problem of air pollution in Hong Kong prompted Australia earlier this year to include a health alert in its advice to travellers to the southern Chinese city, warning that it could aggravate some medical conditions.

Pollution has in recent years become an increasing health and economic headache for the authorities in the city of seven million.

Rubbish. This is NOT news. Way back in 1999, after years of silent suffering, 350 Chinese and Western inhabitants put aside their fear of what the new Chicom overlords might do and demonstrated in protest against this public health hazard. The result? The government put an air pollution monitoring station in Central that would measure the particulates in the air. Nothing but a sop for the multitudes to quiet them. In addition to that useless gesture, the real time streaming video of the harbor, showing the actual condition of the air, was taken down from the Weather Underground site so that people could no longer see how bad it was. Here is the graph from the left hand column of the site. There are several pollutants illustrated but nitrogen oxide is very high.

More Reuters:

Emissions from the factory belt in southern China over Hong Kong’s northern border combined with local emissions from power plants and transport to generate a thick haze over the city for large parts of last year.

Since the year 2000 all diesel fueled taxis were replaced. Local emissions have little to do with it anymore.  But the number of factories just over the border in China has metastasized and many are owned by Hong Kong millionaires. Some Chinese factory workers earn $0.16 per hour making anything from high end designer clothes, poison pet food and children’s toys, cheap house ware, fake Rolex watches and designer bags, cheap viagra, and now Pontiac and Hummer. That’s right folks, this is where American industries are headed.

But the environmental protection hype dog and pony show continues with more nonsense. 

The government has stepped up efforts to cut vehicle emissions, including offering tax concessions to users of environmentally-friendly hybrids.

The city’s first locally-developed electric car debuted on Friday but the MyCar has only been approved for use on roads with a speed limit of up to 50 kilometres per hour (30mph), severely limiting its use, the South China Morning Post reported.

China didn’t sign on to the Kyoto treaty. If man made climate change were a reality I think China would be the biggest culprit NOT the USA. But they own most of our debt, which explains why bureaucrats bow to them and overlook the pesky human rights violations in that country.

Watch and see what China does in Copenhagen at the UNFCCC meeting in December. 

Jerome Corsi might be right.