www.softpedia.com/ progScreenshots/Tropic-Para...

" If there were aliens who were supremely developed, watching earth, watching the US going through their industrial development, they would have been appalled by some of the things they saw too. "

Indeed a justified thought ... but let's move it to today's reality .... I dare to think that ALIEN BEIGNS would be perplexed, flabbergasted to see that although we happen to have the most glorious planet ... the only existing paradise with no equal so far found in the galaxies .... we must , indeed, really be totally insane creatures as to be eroding and keep depleting our environment if just because we foolishly think or believe that we own it all as to dispose with it as we wish ! ....

ICAC is one of the best contributions the Hong Kong governor in the 70's has ever done, it cleaned up corruption on the large part, and Hong Kong could actually start to thrive and become modernize, because it's the changing of mentality, along with the health care system, the free nine year public education started in the early 70's too, and the housing system to house the refugees. I definitely lived in the best time when Hong Kong was booming, but of course, it was very disturbing to see the lost of many of the country side villages. The huge landfill projects, shrinking of the harbor, in those projects, the citizens of HK had no say, they couldn't vote on any of them.

PIC.> www.daylife.com/ photo/01921EVcnXbTS

Some Food for Thought .....:

_____________________________________________GREEN LIVING
THE WORLD BIGGEST POLLUTION FACTORY .....

Ref,: http://www.greenlivingonline.com/OurWorld/the-worlds-biggest-pollution-factory/

(Aug 7, 2008) On the eve of the Olympics, the whole world is watching China. In the following excerpt from The Coming China Wars, author Peter Navarro outlines China’s complex role in the world and the environmental challenges it faces.

The coal that has powered China's economic growth . . . is also choking its people.
Elizabeth C. Economy
Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Author, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenges to China’s Future

At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial production to cooking and space heating in the home. China relies on coal for almost 75 percent of its energy needs. In fact, each year, China consumes more coal than Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined.

The scale and scope of China's coal power plant construction program is almost beyond one's imagination. Consider that every single week, China adds one new large coal power plant to its energy base. Every single year, China builds enough new coal plants to light up the entire British Isles. In any given year, the amount of coal-fired capacity that China is building amounts to more than double that of the entire electricity-generating capacity of the state of California-more than 100 gigawatts. That China's coal appetites are voracious is aptly captured in this passage from the Wall Street Journal:

"On a recent hazy morning in eastern China, the Wuhu Shaoda power company revved up its production of electricity, burning a ton and a half of coal per minute to satisfy more than half the demand of Wuhu, an industrial city of two million people. "

It's not just the quantity of coal used by China that matters. The large amount of coal in China's "energy mix" is quite different from virtually all the other major economies of the world, which depend much more on oil. China's heavy coal dependence, coupled with a woeful lack of pollution-control technologies, make China's air-quality problem a very different one from that of developed countries, such as the United States and Germany, in at least three ways:

First, unlike in the United States, Germany, or Japan where sophisticated pollution-control technologies are deployed, much of what Chinese power plants and factories spew in the air is not just sulfur dioxide but also a high percentage of fine particulate matter. This is a critical observation because particulate matter is the most damaging form of airborne pollutants.

Second, small cities in China are no better off than large cities in terms of ambient air quality. This is because small cities are as likely as large cities to depend on coal in both their residential and commercial sectors. That means that China's pollution woes are spread over the entire country in cities small and large rather than concentrated in a few large industrial hubs.

Third, unlike the developed world where the automobile is the single largest source of air pollution, China's current problem is primarily a "stationary source" one. These stationary sources range from large coal-fired power plants in huge factory towns to small coal-fired stoves and heaters in peasant homes.

The nightmare here is that even if China is able to get better pollution controls on its power plants, and even if it is able to convert some of its population to natural gas cooking, China's air basins are still likely to be overwhelmed in the next several decades by an explosion in the number of new vehicles on Chinese roads. Just consider this astonishing statistic reported by Elizabeth C. Economy: China is now adding 15,000 new cars a day to its roads, and it expects to have more cars than the United States -- as many as 130 million -- as early as 2040. In addition, Elizabeth C. Economy also reports the following:

First, China is expected to construct fully half of all the buildings in the world over the next 25 years. Beyond sheer quantity, the nightmare here is that these buildings will be electricity sinkholes because Chinese buildings are notoriously energy inefficient. This will only further exacerbate China's coal dependence and collaterally gargantuan pollution emissions.

Second, China plans to move almost a half a billion peasants off the farm into factories and cities over the next several decades. As a rule, urbanites introduced to the magic of refrigerators, TVs, and toasters use more than three times the amount of energy as their rural counterparts.

On top of all this, Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared. If ever there were a blueprint for a global pollution factory, China would be the model.

The above is an excerpt from the book The Coming China Wars by Peter Navarro.

Peter Navarro a business professor at the University of California-Irvine. A gifted speaker, Navarro is a regular CNBC contributors and appears frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review.

There is a US brand, name I can't think of now, their marketing tool is the fact that entire production is US based, they have met all the ethical standards. It's a very popular brand, started in LA, still based in LA.

If the west value so much of ethical issues and the environment, the western manufactures have to put the pressure onto Chinese factories, and sourcing companies, to make sure every step of the production is ethical, if not, pressure to pull the production out of there. Politicians and environmentalists points are not as affective and have as much direct results as western merchants and manufacturers putting pressure on China. Consumers could demand manufactures to post their oversea's sourcing and manufacturing's information on their companies' websites. This could be a very affective way to oversee ethical and environmental practice by factories and manufactures, instead of letting politicians do that, give the power back to the people, inform them and allow them to participate. If consumers demand to know and manufactures demand, bet you factories in China would change quickly in order to keep the business.

PIC>> i-guydesignersunglasses.blogspot.com/ 2007_07_

" This is basically a global factory, global production assembly line now, where the west produce the design, and then China manufacture the products, to point the finger to only China doesn't exactly hold up. Since the western companies and consumers are enjoying the fruits of the labors. "

Indeed but how do you think that the WEST can or should ' FORCE ' China to become responsible ? ... by simply stopping to use Chinese enticements and their offerings of making 'easy 'money at the cost of their Chinese citizens' health, their own environment and with such degrading working conditions ... by just simply to refuse such easy 'bounty ' ? ... or shouldn't the Chinese citizens without having to use VIOLENCE try to push such urgent agendas forward ? .... of course I'm thinking that if a 'single' figure like the great Mahatma Gandhi managed to 'defeat' the largest Empire ever known in modern history to achieve his goal ... why is it that such exorbitant sheer number of people cannot manage to 'move' things in the right direction ? ... of course I'm being rhetorical about it ! ... because we perfectly know that FEAR, INTIMIDATION, TORTURE, etc or any means available are used to silence their people's voice ... and let's not mention the intimidation that goes on at the "DIPLOMATIC' level when such issues are raised in the international forums ... and yet they PERFECTLY know that they are CHOKING TO DEATH, literally , their own people, making their children horribly SICK and destroying their OWN FUTURE and the health of their next generation ... so why do you really think that pointing the finger at China doesn't add up ? when they are ruining what belongs to them and no one can change that in reality but THEMSELVES and if they really care about their own environment and a little less about ' their MONEY should they not invest in THEIR OWN future by helping to applying the right policies ... which in the end will benefit all of them ... Intelligence is what makes us different from the ANIMAL KINGDOM ... let's hope it still works like that and we mankind haven't totally horribly mutated into something else !

And I don't think that they will be short of candidates to be found around the world who doesn't want to take advantage of such 'RICHES & DELIGHTS ' with the total compliment of the Chinese Government !

What we in the WEST can, should or may do ( read ' WE ' as in CONSUMERS ) is to BOYCOTT any CHINESE PRODUCTS in order to make at the very least an statement !...... but that is of course if we are indeed sincere about caring for the world environment, the unfortunate children that are paying such a high price or our Chinese fellow humans for that matter !