Why is the U.S. so much cleaner than China

Question

Depending on the study, either the U.S. or China is the world's biggest polluter. The U.S. has a lot of cars on the road, and surely is the biggest polluter per capita, but the U.S. doesn't seem to have nearly the problems that China has. China's plants and factories do not have near the environmental protections as U.S. plants, and China burns a lot of coal for power. Also many of the top 20 polluted cities in the world are in china. The question is, if the U.S. pollutes so much, why is it so much cleaner than china?

Answer 1

Can you be more precise about the type of emissions:

*Pollutants like:

- NOx emissions?

- SOx

- soot

- dust

- other

*Greenhouse gases?

-> China emitts a lot of greenhouse gases, about the same amount as the US. The pollution levels are higher due to dirty plants. They are the result of:

- a different industrial history (small plants with a low technology)

- poor design

- lack of regulations

- low level of law enforcement

Moreover, most of the activity is very concentrated in coastal/industrial regions. The mountainous landscape reduces the windspeed and therefore the dissemination of the pollution.

Answer 2

Because it's MUCH richer, and a very stable democracy.

The US passed stringent pollution control laws in the 1970s and 80s.  Because we could afford to.

China's leaders have a very large, very poor population to deal with.  They've emphasized economic growth over quality of life.  They're getting richer and starting to catch up.  

For example, their pollution control requirements for NEW cars are more stringent than ours, but they have a lot of old, highly polluting cars.

Answer 3

there are a few difrences. china has far less regulation on factory emissions. Chinese society also dose not value communal arias as much as western society's.  

Answer 4

The US has a richer populous that cares more about how clean their air and water is.

There's a relationship between wealth and pollution with those who are really poor not having enough to actually affect the environment, as they get wealthier they begin to pollute because they are more concerned with increasing their standard of living than with the environment.

Then they get to a point at which the polluted environment is considered a problem and they start deciding that they'd like to clean things up (since they have their basic necessities taken care of).

Environmentalism is a luxury and requires a high standard of living to exist.

Answer 5

The USA has air quality standards that go back to the 1970's. China does not.

When Al Gore put down the US auto manufacturers in his video about having lower fuel ratings than China he didn't mention how China didn't have emission controls on their cars. Another Democratic scare tactic.

Go back and view An Inconvenient Truth again

The same reason you don't see a lot of French and Italian cars here like you did back in the 60's and 70's.

Answer 6

because China is communist.

Why do you think East Germany was so filthy compared to West germany.

Why were all iron curtain nations filthy compared to Nato/EU countries?

The communists did what they pleased and were inefficient , and had low technology, and the people were too lazy and brainwashed to care.

China is one of only a handful of remaining communist shytholes, and their pollution is evidence of that fact.

Answer 7

answer: we don't.

the reason we didn't ratify the kyoto protocol is because we thought it was too lenient, and since we're a developed country, our efforts can go to making our way of life cleaner and more efficient, rather than just getting started, building infrastructure, like china and russia, and india

Answer 8

The problem is you're not differentiating between different types of pollution.

China and the US emit approximately the same amount of CO2, but per person, the US emits far more.  This is mostly because the US has far more cars on the road (in fact, California alone consumes more gas than China at the moment).

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/...

If you're talking about pollutants which make the air dirty (which CO2 doesn't do - it contributes to global warming but not air pollution), China is much worse because of their coal power plants.  US air quality used to be terrible around 1970 (same with many other countries like the UK), but then we passed Clean Air Acts and cleaned up our emissions.

Basically the difference is that the US is a developed country which addressed some of our pollution problems.  China on the other hand is a developing country.  Their main concern right now is meeting the growing needs of the people becoming increasingly wealthy - i.e. providing them with more power.  And the cheapest and quickest way to provide power is through coal.

Answer 9

When China becomes richer and moves away from communism, then they may decide to change things. I see that in the next 10 years. Look at Britain. England used to have filthy streets, and the reason the government was even poor, but when the UK got richer, new laws were passed like "You can't emit a certain amount of emissions from wool factories"etc.. I guess that's where China will end up.  

Answer 10

China has no EPA... no laws concerning pollution. They arrest, convict and execute environmentalists and any and all "Green" advocates... usually all in the same day, I might add. I kind of like their policies.

Answer 11

I agree with Dana--

We spend billions of dollars each year on environmental initiatives.

http://www.doe.gov/news/5920.htm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2...

However having lived for 5 years in Warsaw, Poland and traveled extensively throughout central and eastern Europe-- I find it fascinating that the "developing" countries have carbon credits available to SELL to us!