Sounds harsh at first, right? Sounds like overkill, perhaps? No pun intended.
But, after you look at a few of the driving factors behind the Chinese government’s decision to grant its legal system the power to hand down death sentences to major polluters of China’s water supply, things will become crystal clear — unlike a LOT of China’s water.
- 400 of China’s approximate 655 major cities in the North China Plains rely solely on groundwater for their drinking water and a recent report stated that a huge percentage of China’s groundwater contains pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation waste water, contamination from the petrochemical industry, household waste products, and a myriad of industrial waste products.
Approximately 130 million people reside in the North Plains region of China.
- Test results from past years showed elevated levels of contaminants like iron, manganese, fluoride, nitrites & nitrates, ammonia derivatives, and a host of other metals.
A dangerous number of the levels detected definitely exceeded health & safety limits for drinking water.
- An unusually high (disproportionate when compared to the rest of the world) number of Chinese citizens have experienced tooth enamel damage and bone disease… quite possibly as a result of exposure to fluoride in their drinking water which could have come from a long list of herbicides, pesticides and industrial processes — all of which experts believe found their way into the Chinese water supply as runoff at some point.
- Some experts in the water remediation field believe that China will need to spend more than 80 million dollars over the next 7 years to clean up the North Plains region… and some of the contaminants currently detected may still exist in higher than desirable concentrations after China invests all that money in its water clean up efforts.
So… after reading that, do you think the Chinese Government should have given permission to issue death sentences for major water polluters to its judges?
Find more detailed statistics on China’s current water woes here.
And in conclusion?
To close this article we would like to refrain from commentary on the appropriateness of the death penalty aspect of the Chinese water crisis and focus, instead, on a point that makes us wonder exactly WHO the Chinese Government intends to target with its death threats.
As far as we can tell from the reading we have done over the years, most big business and heavy industry has had very close, if not incest-like, ties to the the Chinese Government. Having said that, would the Chinese Government REALLY target its own friends and family?
Personally, we do not think the possibility of death sentences proves much when it comes to Chinese Government’s commitment toward cleaning up its waterways and making sure its citizens have safe, clean drinking water.
Proof of that commitment, in our eyes, will arrive when we see the Chinese Government spend the 80+ million dollars to help its citizens.
