We all need to take our minds off the imminent collapse of global finance, and the likely advent of prison-style barter to replace it. So let's turn our attention to looming environmental catastrophe, and China's role in deciding whether our future will more resemble Blade Runner or Road Warrior.

But we'll begin on a hopeful note. First, sit back and let us tell you a story. Once there was an Asian country that was furiously manufacturing the world's junk, growing at unprecedented rates, and spewing enough pollution as a result to warrant domestic and international condemnation. A country called Japan.

Here's the way Time Magazine told the story in 1970, back when we were all expecting nuclear annihilation at any moment, or else a new ice age from all the pollution blocking the sun. Of course our concerns then were silly and unfounded compared to today's, seeing as that was then and this is now. But listen to the article for a familiar ring.

First, there's the patronizing copy about an Asian underdog bounding to the head of the pack:

 

"The skyline is a futurescape of spires and saucers, globes and polyhedrons, sweeping carapaces and shimmering towers of aluminum, glass and steel. The scene strongly suggests the movie 2001, and well it might. No country has a stronger franchise on the future than Japan. No developed nation is growing faster. Its economy quadrupled in the past decade, and will triple again in the next."

But wait, economic ascendancy exacts a grim price:

 

"By day, the world's largest metropolis (pop. 11.4 million) is a hazy brown and gray sprawl. Prosperity has only worsened Tokyo's housing shortage, its snarled traffic, and the soot that boils in across the brown Sumida River from the blast furnaces of Kawasaki, which has 3,000 industrial plants and a population of 940,000. Two-thirds of Tokyo is still without sewers; residents are served by "honeybucket" men, trucks and a "night-soil fleet" of disposal ships, some as big as 1,000 tons, that make daily dumping trips offshore. "Don't worry," a crewman smiles, "the Black Current will take it all toward the U.S."

 

When the wind blows in from Tokyo Bay, the downtown area is enveloped in the aroma from "Dream Island," an ironically named landfill project that grows by 7,800 tons of waste a day. The city is trying to reduce its overhanging pall of smog by persuading homeowners and industrialists to switch from coal to fuel oil (at a cost of increased carbon monoxide).

 

Ripped by two superhighways and three railway lines, the city is now a jumble of smoky factories whose fumes often shroud Mount Fuji in a brown pall. The port area of Tagonoura, once famed for its dazzling beaches, is a stinking cesspool. What has transformed Fuji is Japan's almost mythic urge for quick industrialization-with no environmental safeguards.

The environmental problems extended well beyond the country's capital:

 

"Cars in Tokyo cause an eye-stinging photochemical smog. Nearly every major city in Japan has its version of "Yokohama asthma," a wheezing caused by air pollution. Noxious industrial wastes wash around the bays of Tokyo, Osaka and Dokai in northern Kyushu.

 

Death March. Each day Fuji's 150 paper mills pour 2,000,000 tons of raw waste into Tagonoura's waters. The catch of cherry-blossom prawns, a gourmet delicacy unique to the area, has been halved in recent years. Pulp sludge has settled on the floor of the port, reducing the depth of the channel from 30 ft. to 18 ft.-too shallow for even small freighters."

This has nothing to do with the environment, but we can't resist:

 

"That is why so much body-checking and elbowing go on in a Tokyo subway or department store. As Author-Translator Edward Seidensticker puts it in his recent Japan: "They are extremely ceremonious toward those whom they know, and highly unceremonious toward others. Few urban Japanese bother to say 'Excuse me' after stepping on a person's toes or knocking a book out of his hand-provided the person is a stranger. If he is known, it is very common to apologize for offenses that have not been committed."

Well, full contact on subways aside, few would argue that Japan has since pulled the proverbial 180, especially in terms of pollution. Naturally, the fact in no way guarantees China can manage the same salubrious reversal. The precedent is a hopeful ray, however, in a nebulous horizon of smoggy China statistics, and sets off the following varieties of progress with a nimbus of possibility.

BIG TALK

When top PR flaks for special interests, commonly known as politicians, talk of saving sick old mother earth as a top priority, two things happen. Those who take mainstream media at face value, collectively known as Joe Sixpack, panic. The rest of us, derided as cynics, raise an eyebrow, if not a hand to ask where the real agenda is hiding.

Which is hardly to deny that we have major environmental problems. If we are to believe governments can guarantee viable banks and markets, perhaps they can guarantee viable ecosystems as well.

Late last year, President Sarkozy climbed a soapbox at Tsinghua U. to call on China to sign a global contract for an ecological "New Deal". Then at the G8 Summit in Hokkaido this summer, China made an impassioned plea for international cooperation in addressing the environmental crisis. We mention this only to underline how sustainability has become the newest front in foreign policy, miring progress with a mantle of conservation-first posturing.

China has set some impressive goals, however, and has earmarked massive funding for their realization. In 2006, China determined to cut energy intensity twenty percent by 2010, implement fuel economy for vehicles, decommission coal-fired power plants, in short to transition to a low carbon economy with all due haste. Last March, 42 billion yuan were committed to the quest.

The most promising talk, at least to the practically-minded, centers around increased taxes on polluters. In September, deputy minister for environmental protection Pan Yue announced a multi-agency team of experts who were researching the issue. China's move last  year to cut export tax rebates for energy-intensive products, and recent move to raise consumption taxes on large passenger vehicles, proves that pollutions' main drivers are most effectively steered by their wallets.

ACTION

Some are quick to deride China's efforts as a case of too little, too late. They meet staunch dissent from The Climate Group, an international non-profit which trumpets China as the world's "leading renewable energy producer, over-taking more developed economies in exploiting valuable economic opportunities, creating green-collar jobs, and leading development of critical low carbon technologies", according to their new report.

The China Expat in the street can't necessarily be written off as delusional for descrying a rainbow behind all the smog. Since June, China has been waging bagocide on all plastic sacks less than .025 millimeters thick, saving an estimated 37 million barrels of crude a year.

In Beijing, lungs liberated by Olympic "odds and evens" traffic restrictions hollered their approval loudly enough to win another victory for blue skies: a modified regulation keeping cars with plates numbered ‘1' and ‘6' off the roads on Monday, ‘2' and ‘7' Tuesday, and so on through the workweek, effective October 13^th.

INDIVIDUALS

Minds, particularly rational ones, are fickle, flip-flopping in time to new statistics and studies. When hearts are won to a cause, in number enough to become a hip trend, look for sea changes to follow.

There was a time in big-city China when Expats would gather at bars to outdo one another in bouts of lamenting their adopted country's shortcomings. Only easy amatory pickings could console them for what they had left behind. Today, they get oiled up together and actually discuss how to make their new home a better place. While mice are not yet chasing cats, you can witness the miracle for yourself at Beijing Green Drinks, where the sustainability set network in the name of environmental healing.

Wonders truly never cease, as Chinese sustainability stars glitter even from the vacuous reaches of haute couture. Ma Ke, a Changchun-born designer, rejects rampant consumerism, embracing conservation instead. Despite her heretical stance, Ma Ke is Elle's Asian designer of the year, and her Wuyong label the Paris conqueror du jour. Apologies to the thousands of less glamorous folk striving to do China's environment good whom we leave unmentioned. But when fashionistas are riding the sustainability band-wagon, who among us is superficial enough to remain behind?