The devouring dragon
Subtitle: how China's rise threatens our natural world
By: Craig Simons
Edition: First St. Martin's Griffin edition.
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9781250050137
Subjects: Environmental degradation; Environmental protection; Environmental policy; Nature; International cooperation; Environmental responsibility; Effect of human beings on
Description: "China's rise is assaulting the natural world at an alarming rate. In a few short years, China has become the planet's largest market for endangered wildlife, its top importer of tropical trees, and its biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. It's rapid growth has driven up the world's very metabolism: in Brazil, farmers clear large swaths of the Amazon to plant soybeans; Indian poachers hunt tigers and elephants to feed Chinese demand; in the United States, clouds of mercury and ozone drift earth-ward after trans-Pacific jet-stream journeys. Craig Simon's ... argues that China's most important twenty-first-century legacy will be determined by jobs, corporate profits, or political alliances, but by how quickly its growth degrades the global environment and whether it can stem the damage."--Back cover.
Notes: Originally published in hardcover in 2013.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Part I. China's baseline. The Yangtze; title: Baselines; title: The Three Gorges Dam; title: Part II. Life on the brink. Tiger, tiger, burning bright; title: The sixth great extinction; title: Corbett National Park; title: Part III. Our shrinking forests. A forest laid flat; title: New Guinea; title: Our future forests; title: Part IV. Our warming skies. Time travel; title: Hopenhagen.