China in its ravenous greed to try and become an industrial power has forgone its people's very lives. There has never been a country that has become an industrial power that has not sacrificed the health and environment of its people. China's pollution has surpassed all other countries that have become industrial powers. The degradation to China's environment is so severe that its pollution is affecting other countries worldwide and the long term pollution will be a burden to China's people for decades.

There are 560 million people who live in the cities of china only about 1% of those people are found to breathe clean air. Their cities are covered in a dark shroud from the pollution that is being created in China. People in China rarely see the sun, children die right and left from lead poison and their shorelines are covered with algae and there is no marine life, their shores are completely dead.

In China's attempt to have a roaring economy they are using the dirtiest energy possible coal: Severe pollution is not only China's problem but that of the world. China's pollution such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China's coal fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles comes from China. While the world understands and realizes what is causing global warming china forges ahead full throttle and ignores climate change.

China's other problem is that communist party leaders and other high up political people want and enjoy the robust economic gains in fact they demand it being the recipients of riches. If the economy slows down there might be political unrest and those in power in the communist party certainly do not want that to happen.

China's pollution is already causing civil unrest; they have polluted their water so bad it is undrinkable, causing major health problems their health care has skyrocketed. Water is at a shortage and farmland is drying up.

Not all of China's problems are china's fault: American and European companies like to have their products made in China because it is CHEAP. These companies can exploit the environment and people all for more profit. People need to understand that all of us have to live in this world and what happens across the pond so to speak affects all of us eventually. The United states and the European countries need to ban together and put a stop to the import of products made in countries that have no environmental standards after all it is the job of our government to protect the well-being of its citizens and to allow lead based toys, food tainted with chemicals to be imported in to our country and sold to our people is wrong.

So as it goes we are in a vicious circle, we export coal to china so they can burn it to make cheap products so corporations can make a huge nasty profit, sell the cheap crap back to us, while we are breathing their filthy air, drinking dirty water derived from the coal that we sold them. Thousands of people trying to live through severe climate change. Various animal species dying and are on the verge of extinction because they cannot adapt to the changing climate.  Mass exodus of millions of people because the climate has changed and they have no water and are starving. All this; for cheap products from China, and man claims to be intelligent.

I hope people stand up against coal coming through Columbia County; do we want to be a part of the continued assault on our environment and leave a legacy like China to the world's children? I hope not.  Is greed and more money or the ability to buy cheap products that you don't really need worth what the burning of coal does to the world? Stop and think about it. We should have learned from our own mistakes let's not let it happen again, there are other ways to create clean energy lets work together to make it happen. If we can send a man to the moon, explore the universe, we can develop clean energy for the entire world if we simply put our minds to it.