Oh, go choke on your own growth

So the New York Times has just published the third segment of it's "Choking on Growth" series, a string of investigative reports on why China's super-fly economic development is effectively destroying the environment and ruining the lives of the people that live there.

Knock it off, will you?

Look, the Chinese know they're facing an environmental crisis. They know it better than we do in America. And the Chinese government is dealing with it-- albeit in an authoritarian manner, but hey, it's an authoritarian country and that's how shit gets done when your population is bigger than most continents'.

An average young person in China is more conscious of energy usage, water resources, desertification, and air quality than most liberal American college students. The proportional amount of intellectual and political capital being allocated towards environmental sustainability in the Communist Party far surpasses that being spent in the current administration in America.

Sure, this ain't the place to go grass-roots. And yeah, you don't want to drink the water. But this Choking On Growth theme is entirely disingenous: it portrays a country that doesn't care about the environment, or at the very best, cares but is so politically inflexible as to be counterproductive in addressing it. That's simply not the case.

China follows a policy of scientific development. The environment is a problem; everyone recognizes it and wants to see it fixed via better urban planning, public policy, and more efficient technology. In America, we're still debating whether God created monkeys and whether global warming is a big liberal hoax.

China's not choking on it's growth, it's taking care of business and looking ahead to the future.
What's America doing these days?