Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia.
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h is pollution is in
the Sierra Nevada mountain region, in the iconic Yosemite National Park all
the way up to Donner Summit and northward.
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Scientists liken the move-
ment of polluted air to a “ribbon” covering the entire Pacifi c Ocean basin
bent back and forth.
In theory, we're all on this sinking planet together. In practice, defi ning
what the environmental problems are, where they stem from, and what the
best ways to solve them are immensely complicated questions that can end
up replicating and amplifying geopolitical, cultural, and racial struggles and
anxieties writ large. Within the United States, our greatest ecological desire
is to fi xate on China as the focal point of the vast majority of global pollution,
and thus displace our own responsibility for global environmental damage.
After all, for the past century, the United States was truly “number one,” to
quote Friedman, not only in carbon emissions, but in many pollutants. At
the same time, infl uential architects, environmentalists, and others in the
United States fervently believe in the fantasy of China as the “go-to” place
where great green things happen on a vast governmental scale. Contrast
Chinese environmental policy with what the American environmental soci-
ologist Andy Szasz calls the contemporary U.S. obsession with “Shopping
Our Way to Safety,” or environmentalism through individual consumption
of things such as bottled water, buying or growing organic food, and the use
of nontoxic materials.
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h at is not to say that Chinese middle-class consum-
ers don't also increasingly drink bottled water, eat organic, and use “natural
materials,” but there is a diff erence in the national character and invest-
ments, both literal and cultural, in environmental policy and action.
China is our psychological displacement and doppelganger, our enemy
and our salvation. It is home to the world's fi rst “solar billionaire,” and Chi-
nese companies represent 47 percent of the market share of solar panel
installations in the United States, dwarfi ng the 29 percent market share for
American companies.
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China is also the world's largest market for wind
