A second pipe spews black sewage. A few minutes later, Hertsgaard and his Chinese interpreter must hold their breaths and run from a cloud of poisonous chlorine. My poor country. In this country of at least 1.22 billion people, expected to be the world's largest economy by the year 2010, water and air pollution kill more than 2 million people a year. Up to 90 percent of the rainfalls in Guangdong, center of China's economic boom, are acid.
Lung disease causes a quarter of all Chinese deaths.
Between 1950 and 1990, sprawl and erosion ate up as much farmland as exists in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, combined. Already choking on power plant fumes, China plans to add 18,000 megawatts of electric capacity per year, equal to Louisiana's entire power grid, doubling or tripling coal burning by the year 2020. To see if humanity can survive its self-befouling, Hertsgaard traveled the world for six years. He saw many reasons to despair, and a few to hope. In Bangkok, Hertsgaard shows us nonstop 24-hour traffic jams.