Insane Bus Driver in China

[David Morris]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/23/1227857/-China-s-water-pollution-off-the-charts-must-outsource-food-production

With its successful bid to
purchase<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/10/us-usa-smithfield-hearing-idUSBRE9690HN20130710>
the
U.S. pork giant Smithfield, which is pending U.S. governmental approval,
China has revealed its major vulnerability—that of feeding its own people.
Its race to get to the top of global manufacturing has extracted the heavy
cost of fouling its water, land and air so that it must look outside its
boundaries to keep its increasingly unsustainable growth on track.

In a stunning piece,
Bloomberg<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/china-s-coal-fired-economy-dying-of-thirst-as-mines-lack-water.html>
details
China's predicament as a coal/water dilemma. In order to continue its
manufacturing miracle unabated, China must rely on the use of coal, its
number one energy source. Coal requires a massive use of water both in
mining and in burning. Coal industries and power stations use as much as 17
percent of China’s water.

About half of China’s rivers have dried up since 1990 and those that remain
are mostly contaminated. Without enough water, coal can’t be mined, new
power stations can’t run and the economy can’t grow. At least 80 percent of
the nation’s coal comes from regions where the United Nations says water
supplies are either “stressed” or in “absolute scarcity.”
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