Doom and gloom reigns supreme on this blog of mine and though I haven’t written for quite a while this article entails some amazing news. It appears that it pays talking to your neighbour on a plane, you never know what you just might discover. A friend? Foe or even perhaps a private government secret? …
The freelance photographer Lu Guang has photographed some of the most graphic images which are the results of extreme and unmonitored pollution. All the images are from an area called the “Shanxi province“and many other places in China which is known for its horrid pollution.
There are hundreds and thousands of people who are living in places like this right now all over China and the world. This is the price we pay to live in a wonderful world where we can afford to buy this and buy that. Companies and factories are all about trying to mass produce a certain product the world wants more of, in their bid to earn as much money as possible they begin by taking short cuts. These short cuts maybe using cheaper but more noxious chemicals or an unsafe and filthy work place.
Death is clearly a resultant of the contaminated water.The water becomes contaminated when factories dump their toxic waste because it is cheaper then sending it to a plant to be treated. Since the dawn of Industrialisation taking the world by storm things have remained the same. We are still polluting our world, using all of its resources and not giving a damn. Since most companies are offshoring to China and using bogus methods of production because we all know about Chinas unapparent monitoring system . It is not treating China well in the sense of the environmental and wellbeing of its people. The land is being poisoned for the sole reason of accumulating more and more money. The people who live in the surrounding areas and work in the factories are destroying their health unwillingly because they need money to survive. The only people who are driven to work in places like factories are there because they have no other choice.
With images like these at the ready it leaves little to the imagination on what a completely polluted and treeless world would look like. Everywhere you see there is eroded land, poisoned air, contaminated water and ashen faces looking up at you everywhere. It is a very bleak reality that hundreds and thousands are facing everyday right now. The people who live there would rather live in a world where you and I live in today but this is not possible because of the meagre pay they are earning. Their most basic necessity-water is not even safe. The factory waste is being released into their sources of water leaving them with literally nothing else to drink so in the end their only choice is to drink what is there.
China has done well to hide these images to the international community and especially media but with the internet it’s getting harder and harder to hide these things. Looking at these images you can see it is a far cry from what the Chinese government wants you to see. Contrasting these images to the wealth, beauty and prosperity of what the Beijing Olympics has managed to sell to the public is an extreme difference. Worst of all, these images aren’t staged or faked.
Do we really want to live in a world like this? I should rephrase that because we are already living in one. Do we really want to have a world like this?
More information and photos can be found here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2En9wI/www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
THERAMBLINGSOFATEENAGEGIRL 