China's Ticking Time Bomb

Erin Lankford
9/3/2010
1:23 PM

As the need for energy in China is growing so are their amount of industrial incidents. Recently they have had many environmental catastrophes with no sign of slowing down. In July Beijing experienced a terrible oil spill just as China learned they had taken the number one place for energy consumption above the United States. The site of the oil spill had been classified as an environmental risk as early as 2006. The oil spill happened after two pipelines exploded and caused a fiery blaze that lasted three days. The International Energy Agency announced that China consumed more energy that the United States shortly after the incident. In less than a decade the energy use of China has more than doubled. China also became the worlds largest car market, buying more new cats than all of America. By year 2020 it is expected for the amount of cars in China to triple. China is now the world's largest polluter with environmental accidents rising 98 percent and air quality falling for the first time in five years. Their dependency on foreign oil is only expected to increase since economic growth outnumbers what they are able to produce domestically. One thing to consider in rising oil prices is that China was responsible for 40 percent of the increase in world oil consumption. China would like to have 40 percent of the country's oil imports carried on Chinese vessels by 2015, becoming the worlds largest shipbuilder. Construction of large oil terminals has increased but environmental threats like the oil explosion are also likely to increase.

It was predicted that China would surpass the United States in energy consumption but it happened sooner than it was thought to. This shows that the world is rapidly using resources in ways that are not always economical. Most people have a general understanding of how much we consume as Americans and to think that there is another country that has surpassed us is a scary thought. Problems like these oil spills do a great amount of damage to any water supplies that are nearby. Streams and rivers and beaches are polluted and it can take an extremely long time for them to recover. What is even more sad is that it was known for years that this particular location was deemed at risk and yet it was not corrected.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17iht-edchambers.html?_r=1&ref=environment