Vocabulary about the Environment--环境

Here is a link to a recent vocabulary list I put together with a number of terms relating to the environment and environmental protection. As I mentioned in the previous post, I am starting to put some newer vocabulary lists for Chinese into spreadsheet format at my Lingopath website. The greater width makes it easier to include traditional characters in addition to simplified, and I can also line up data types in columns in a way that may make access to data easier for learners. My intention is to offer open access on a basis like that of CEDICT.

Like all heavily industrialized countries, China also has to find ways to deal effectively with increasing pollution (污染 wu1 ran3) and the related problem of global warming (全球变暖 quan2 qiu2 bian4 nuan3). A certain amount of media attention has been focused on China's reaching a rate of current air pollution that surpasses that of the US. While any and all such problems require the most serious efforts towards viable solutions on the part of all parties, there is also something rather disingenuous in finger pointing at China by people in the developed countries of the West, and particularly by people in the US.

The West and the US have been the world's largest polluters at least since the beginning of the industrial age, so our cumulative "contribution" (that sounds too positive, doesn't it) must be utterly monumental compared to the newcomers on the block. The economic resources and research capabilities of the West have also been huge by comparison. How come we're not further along in the process to finding solutions. We pat ourselves on the back for certain standards that were set only at a point when our standard of living was well above that of today's China and other developing nations. Nevertheless, since the population of China is several times that of the US, the per person contribution of the US to pollution and global warming must still be several times that of China. And this is despite the fact that we in the West have "exported" much of our pollution to developing nations by means of the global economy. We reap the benefits of the products produced elsewhere, but we get to blame them for producing the pollution related to those products, while not having to breathe it etc. ourselves (locally, at least).

A much, much larger share of our contribution to pollution in the West relates to individual consumption and standard of living, things that are even more difficult to control politically and otherwise than the industrial area. Are we capable of addressing these issues in a country where recent government officials were in denial about the reality of global warming and the causal role played by people and pollution? All the world hopes for a higher standard of living, but the small fraction of the world's population that have achieved higher standards of living have already been the major force in driving the world to the brink of ecodisaster. All of us in the world need to be working very hard together to help each other arrive at solutions to these problems without just pointing fingers, as if that absolves us of our own collective and individual responsibility.