Word: coal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more China roars, the more pollution pours out of all its new Buicks, coal-fired power plants and cement factories. Last year China surpassed the U.S. as the world's top producer of greenhouse gases. Major upgrades are needed to its power stations, steel mills and chemical factories. Not only does Japan have the technology and money to help China, India and the rest of emerging Asia reduce emissions, it also has the will to share them. The Japanese government sees environmental assistance as a way to bolster its waning influence in the region, a phenomenon its people lament...
...appeared, smiling, in a photograph of a lynch mob. And just as you're about to block out that queasiness, Twain slams in a snippet of what a particularly despicable lynching (in Texas, as it happened) was like. Oh, God. (The man was slow-roasted to death over a coal-oil fire.) And then, when he starts taking off on the missionaries? I don't know that I want to express this opinion. But there's no getting around it: it's funny...
...Coal, steel, oil - we think of these old-economy industries, and we picture pollution. Smoggy skies, fouled rivers, toxic waste. As we make the transition to a new economy, we imagine that industrial pollution will become a thing of the past. Mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players - they conjure images of spotless semiconductor factories and the eternal summer of Silicon Valley where the digital economy was born...
Michael Zhao has seen the damage firsthand. A journalist connected with the Asia Society, Zhao traveled to Guiyu - which processes up to 1 million tons of electronic garbage a year - to film a documentary on the impact of e-waste. "I saw people putting leftover parts on coal fired stoves, to melt down the waste to get to the gold," he says. "It'd produce a reddish smoke that was so strong I couldn't stand there for more than a couple minutes before my eyes would just burn." (Hear Zhao talk about the e-waste on this week...
...There are some obvious challenges. Power from coal-fired plants is cheaper. And the closest connection point to the national electricity grid is 500 km away. But Grove-White says geothermal power will become economic once coal and gas plants have to pay for their carbon emissions, which he expects to happen in an Australian carbon-trading scheme due to start in 2010. While the transmission lines will be expensive, their cost - $500 million or more - is included in the business model...