Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Essay Example

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Your First Your Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed A lookat Ch12, “China, Lurching Giant” of Jared Diamond’s 2005 book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed supports the fact that, in the 21st century, there is no longer any such thing as “local” environmental problem.
China is the most populous country in the world. To sustain the large population, the Chinese government did whatever was necessary to achieve that, as well as attracting foreign investors and enabling local and international trade. Most factories and industries were established which resulted to environmental problems through pollution. Diamond (2005) writes: “China’s . . . environmental problems will not remain domestic issues but will spill over to the rest of the world”.
Trade between china and the rest of the world also causes environmental problems. As Diamond (2005) puts it, “Imported timber, hence exported deforestation”. China is the third largest consumer of timber in the world. China has a very high demand for timber; however, local supply is limited by a government ban. Therefore, China depends on timber imports to satisfy its high demand. This high demand causes deforestation in the countries China imports from.
The Chinese government aspires to turn China into a First world country. Diamond (2005) argues that, “China’s achievement of First World standards will approximately double the entire world’s human resource use and environmental impact. . . . That is the strongest reason why China’s problems automatically become the world’s problems”.
With or without China’s interaction with other countries, pollution from China is inevitable. “China’s large territory and population would guarantee effects on other people merely because China is realising its wastes and gases into the same ocean and atmosphere (Diamond, 2005).
China imports and exports her environmental problems to the world knowing or unknowing. The fact that all countries are globally connected means that environmental problems are and will never be any country’s local problem, but global problems.

References
Diamond, J. M. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking. Read More