SPEWS WE CAN USE:

China chokes on a coal-fired boom (Michael Sheridan, 12/31/06, Times of London)

A GREAT coal rush is under way across China on a scale not seen anywhere since the 19th century.

Its consequences have been detected half a world away in toxic clouds so big that they can seen from space, drifting across the Pacific to California laden with microscopic particles of chemicals that cause cancer and diseases of the heart and lung.

Nonetheless, the Chinese plan to build no fewer than 500 new coal-fired power stations, adding to some 2,000, most of them unmodernised, that spew smoke, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

It is the political fallout of that decision that is likely to challenge the foundations on which Britain and other developed nations have built their climate change policy — even as there are signs that ordinary Chinese citizens are at last rebelling against lives spent in poisonous conditions.

Cloaked in swirling mists of soot particles and smoke, cities such as China’s “coal capital” of Datong are entering the coldest period of winter in which demand for power and heating produces the worst pollution.

It is often darkness at noon in Datong...

Perhaps it's just a coincidence that where "Darkness at Noon" once referred toi the political oppression of states like China it is now found in a story about how it's their environmental crimes that are unacceptable. At any rate, the Right needn't care about environmental issues to seize on this one as a club with which to beat the regime.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 1, 2007 10:01 AM